2019 Nommo Award for Best Novel
2019 Otherwise Award
2019 PEN/Hemingway Award (nominee)
2018 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35
Ada was born with one foot on the other side. Having prayed her into existence, her parents Saul and Saachi struggle to deal with the volatile and contradictory spirits peopling their troubled girl.
When Ada comes of age and heads to college, the entities within her grow in power and agency. An assault leads to a crystallization of her selves: As?ghara and Saint Vincent. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these selves - now protective, now hedonistic - seize control of Ada, her life spirals in a dark and dangerous direction.
Narrated from the perspectives of the various selves within Ada, and based in the author's realities, Freshwater explores the metaphysics of identity and being. Feeling explodes through the language of this scalding novel, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.
Genre: Literary Fiction
When Ada comes of age and heads to college, the entities within her grow in power and agency. An assault leads to a crystallization of her selves: As?ghara and Saint Vincent. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these selves - now protective, now hedonistic - seize control of Ada, her life spirals in a dark and dangerous direction.
Narrated from the perspectives of the various selves within Ada, and based in the author's realities, Freshwater explores the metaphysics of identity and being. Feeling explodes through the language of this scalding novel, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Akwaeke Emezi is a major, exhilarating talent." - NoViolet Bulawayo
"What if we were not one person, but three in one body?created by careless gods who forgot to ‘close the gate’? Akwaeke Emezi’s novel, Freshwater, paints a fiercely unique, unforgettable story of identity, mental health and the world beyond ours. This impressive debut is lyrical and well-told." - Tananarive Due
"In Emezi’s remarkable debut novel, Freshwater, we enter the lives of our protagonist, starting in Nigeria and ending in the United States. Every page is imbued with radiant prose, and a chorus of poetic voices. With a plot as alive and urgent as it is relatable, Freshwater is also solidly its own, brims with its unique preoccupations. Never before have I read a novel like it?one that speaks to the unification and separation of bodies and souls, the powers or lack thereof of gods and humans, and the long and arduous journey to claiming our many selves, or to setting our many selves free." - Chinelo Okparanta
"With this stunning debut, Akwaeke Emezi has blessed us with nothing less than a masterpiece. Freshwater is a journey of loss and reconciliation, home and heartbreak, and ultimately a survivor’s guide to harmonizing spirit and flesh. Quite simply a gorgeous, elegant, and brutal work of truthtelling. To repeat: A masterpiece." - Daniel José Older
"Freshwater is one of those dazzling novels that defies these kinds of descriptions. We can gesture to the story - set in Nigeria and America, told by all the selves of its Tamil/Igbo protagonist - but such synthesis fails to convey the magic that awaits its reader. At once fiction and memoir, potent in its spiritual richness and sexual frankness, the text seems not to have been written by but channeled through its brilliant author. This may be Emezi’s debut novel but she is an old - an ancient - storyteller: thrillingly at home in the tradition of griots, poets, seers and seekers." - Taiye Selasi
"Wow. The net effect is a feeling of being peeled open, and quickly finding that skinless place to be normal. More than any novel I can remember, it feels utterly present to the place we are in the world." - Binyavanga Wainaina
"A clarion call to those of us who find that our minds are more haunted and complex than that of the status quo. In exquisite, unearthly prose, Akwaeke Emezi renders the ordinary strange and the strange, ordinary?making Freshwater the most stunning debut novel I’ve read in years. An unforgettable literary experience." - Esmé Weijun Wang
"What if we were not one person, but three in one body?created by careless gods who forgot to ‘close the gate’? Akwaeke Emezi’s novel, Freshwater, paints a fiercely unique, unforgettable story of identity, mental health and the world beyond ours. This impressive debut is lyrical and well-told." - Tananarive Due
"In Emezi’s remarkable debut novel, Freshwater, we enter the lives of our protagonist, starting in Nigeria and ending in the United States. Every page is imbued with radiant prose, and a chorus of poetic voices. With a plot as alive and urgent as it is relatable, Freshwater is also solidly its own, brims with its unique preoccupations. Never before have I read a novel like it?one that speaks to the unification and separation of bodies and souls, the powers or lack thereof of gods and humans, and the long and arduous journey to claiming our many selves, or to setting our many selves free." - Chinelo Okparanta
"With this stunning debut, Akwaeke Emezi has blessed us with nothing less than a masterpiece. Freshwater is a journey of loss and reconciliation, home and heartbreak, and ultimately a survivor’s guide to harmonizing spirit and flesh. Quite simply a gorgeous, elegant, and brutal work of truthtelling. To repeat: A masterpiece." - Daniel José Older
"Freshwater is one of those dazzling novels that defies these kinds of descriptions. We can gesture to the story - set in Nigeria and America, told by all the selves of its Tamil/Igbo protagonist - but such synthesis fails to convey the magic that awaits its reader. At once fiction and memoir, potent in its spiritual richness and sexual frankness, the text seems not to have been written by but channeled through its brilliant author. This may be Emezi’s debut novel but she is an old - an ancient - storyteller: thrillingly at home in the tradition of griots, poets, seers and seekers." - Taiye Selasi
"Wow. The net effect is a feeling of being peeled open, and quickly finding that skinless place to be normal. More than any novel I can remember, it feels utterly present to the place we are in the world." - Binyavanga Wainaina
"A clarion call to those of us who find that our minds are more haunted and complex than that of the status quo. In exquisite, unearthly prose, Akwaeke Emezi renders the ordinary strange and the strange, ordinary?making Freshwater the most stunning debut novel I’ve read in years. An unforgettable literary experience." - Esmé Weijun Wang
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