A striking debut novel about an unforgettable childhood, by a Nigerian writer the New York Times has crowned “the heir to Chinua Achebe.”

Told by nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of a childhood in Nigeria, in the small town of Akure. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his absence to skip school and go fishing.

At the forbidden nearby river, they meet a madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact-both tragic and redemptive-will transcend the lives and imaginations of the book’s characters and readers.

Dazzling and viscerally powerful, The Fisherman is an essential novel about Africa, seen through the prism of one family’s destiny.