Tiny Sunbirds Far Away

Author(s): Christie Watson

Location(s): Lagos, Warri

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): Modern

Location

Content

Blessing (12) and her brother Ezekiel (14) find their comfortable lives in Lagos change immensely when their parents separate. They move to near Warri, their Mother’s village. This is the story of the small family adapting to a different way of live, rural life in exchange for the big city.

‘Everything changed after Mama found Father lying on top of another woman.’

Blessing and her brother Ezikiel adore their larger-than-life father, their glamorous mother and their comfortable life in Lagos. But all that changes when their father leaves them for another woman.

Their mother is fired from her job at the Royal Imperial Hotel – only married women can work there – and soon they have to quit their air-conditioned apartment to go and live with their grandparents in a compound in the Niger Delta. Adapting to life with a poor countryside family is a shock beyond measure after their privileged upbringing in Lagos.

Told in Blessing’s own beguiling voice, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away shows how some families can survive almost anything. At times hilarious, always poignant, occasionally tragic, it is peopled with characters you will never forget.

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