WINNER OF THE RSL SCRIPTORIUM AWARD
‘A passionate, brave, lively and beautifully-written book about childhood, family, relationships, friendships and the tragedy of losing those we love.’ Bernardine Evaristo
In this hybrid memoir, Okojie moves through the landscapes of the body and the mind: illness and depression, inheritance and grief, prejudice and belonging, memory and desire. She considers the ways trauma settles in the body, and the unexpected ways healing can travel through generations. Tracing her reconnection with her cultural heritage, finding in the music, movement and traditions of her family new ways of understanding herself.
With breathtaking prose and acute intelligence, she recalls the oddness and violence of an English girls’ boarding school; the sacrifices and pleasures of a life in pursuit of art; and the indelible marks we make upon one another in our bids for connection.
Throughout, Okojie moves between the intimate and the expansive, harnessing a boundless imagination that celebrates the evolving body moving through life, with all its pain and glory. Quixotic Fissures is a powerful collection about the strange, beautiful work of transformation.
‘Okojie’s recollections paint the most heartwarming portrayal of an author and her community. This book is a celebration of black excellence and a reminder of how much is out there for us if we pay attention.’ Tendai Huchu
‘A passionate, brave, lively and beautifully-written book about childhood, family, relationships, friendships and the tragedy of losing those we love.’ Bernardine Evaristo
In this hybrid memoir, Okojie moves through the landscapes of the body and the mind: illness and depression, inheritance and grief, prejudice and belonging, memory and desire. She considers the ways trauma settles in the body, and the unexpected ways healing can travel through generations. Tracing her reconnection with her cultural heritage, finding in the music, movement and traditions of her family new ways of understanding herself.
With breathtaking prose and acute intelligence, she recalls the oddness and violence of an English girls’ boarding school; the sacrifices and pleasures of a life in pursuit of art; and the indelible marks we make upon one another in our bids for connection.
Throughout, Okojie moves between the intimate and the expansive, harnessing a boundless imagination that celebrates the evolving body moving through life, with all its pain and glory. Quixotic Fissures is a powerful collection about the strange, beautiful work of transformation.
‘Okojie’s recollections paint the most heartwarming portrayal of an author and her community. This book is a celebration of black excellence and a reminder of how much is out there for us if we pay attention.’ Tendai Huchu
Reviews
Okojie's recollections paint the most heartwarming portrayal of an author and her community. This book is a celebration of black excellence and a reminder of how much is out there for us if we pay attention.
A passionate, brave, lively and beautifully written book about
childhood, family, relationships, friendships
and the tragedy of losing those we love.
Irenosen Okojie pushes the boundaries in what is 'the norm' with this rich communion of self and psyche. We have been truly blessed.
Refusing easy resolution, Quixotic Fissures is a luminous and audacious testament to language and community as our primary instruments of survival against the chaos of grief, inheritance and memory.
Quixotic Fissuresis so many wonderful things: it's frank, often bracingly so; it's also funny, erotic, tender, vulnerable and sometimes quietly devastating. Above all, Okojie's latest book is engrossing. It is a highly original work, and the writing - bold, heartfelt, intellectually curious - is so often surprising. I am excited for readers to fall in love with it, as I did.
Irenosen Okojie is an iconoclast, and this latest collection provides insight into a mind brimming with the familiar and the strange, the elegant discomfort of the uncanny, and a refreshingly unpredictable language.
I couldn't have known how affected I'd be by the baring of this creative soul. I cried, I laughed, I nodded so hard, I stopped to think. The collection is heartfelt, beautiful, drowned in light, yet unafraid of the darkness. These essays make me want to write lavishly, love harder, embrace joy as nourishment.
Intimate, bold and evocative, Quixotic Fissures situates grief alongside its opposites: from farce to the mortuary, blindness to light. It reads like witnessing Okojie at her writing desk, discovering in real time what her fiction's aesthetic intensity can do to the essay form.
Nuanced and tender, this genre defying collection is full of powerful,
moving insights, rendered in Okojie's signature vibrantly innovative
language.
Quixotic Fissures moves through liminal spaces: between past and present, body and landscape, rupture and transformation. Okojie's masterful command of language and form lies in her ability to pierce into the invisible wounds that ensnare us all, while conjuring inner and outer worlds with startling texture and poignancy.
Okojie is such a vibrant, accomplished writer, and this collection showcases some of her finest writing