Indigene: A Novella and Short Stories

Four women grapple with social circumstances out of their control in this novella and short stories collection written by an award-winning Nigerian author.

Perceptive and satirical, Indigene highlights revealing moments in the everyday lives of four introspective professional Nigerian women who grapple with circumstances out of their control.

In the novella, Indigene, a sequel to Atta’s debut novel, Everything Good Will Come, Enitan, a law partner in Lagos, takes stock of herself after she turns sixty. In the short stories that follow, ＂Unsuitable Ties,＂ ＂Debt,＂ and ＂Housekeeping,＂ Yemisi, a caterer attending a London dinner party as a guest, assesses the company she keeps; Grace, a consultant for a Big Four accounting firm, confronts her shopping habit in a New Jersey mall; and Abi, an ER physician staying in an Atlanta hotel, reflects on the peculiarities of working in the American South.

Set in cities where Atta has lived, Indigene leans into social criticism as it explores the dilemmas of these and other characters.

Sefi Atta is the author of the novels Everything Good Will Come, Swallow, A Bit of Difference, The Bead Collector, The Bad Immigrant; a collection of short stories, News from Home; and Sefi Atta: Selected Plays. She has received several literary awards, including the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.