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While The World Slept
"Ewa Gerald writes with tenderness and a profound grasp of what it means to be human. This collection is a brilliant debut from a writer everyone should watch out for."
--Hussani Abdulrahim.
In this collection of ten poignant short stories set in Nigeria, Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi delves into the complexities of identity, community and social justice, offering a profound exploration of personal and social struggles.
In "Ofure," a young man-driven by a recurring dream-embarks on a journey to his hometown where, in a gnawing sense of hope, he believes he would meet with his friend and lover, alive and well. And finally, reconnect with memory and the fissures in his past.
In "A Mother's Love," a woman's life is redefined when her abusive husband dies. Instead of relief, she feels slightly stalled as she struggles to fully adjust to this new loss and to understand her son's nonchalance, to gauge his grief and his reason for being distant.
In "What's The Essence of Beauty," a man renounces the priesthood after many years and returns to the place of his birth, where he must surmount his fears and finally come out to his mother.
With unflinching honesty, these stories tackle love and self-discovery, shedding light on the struggles of women and queer people to be recognized in a society that seeks to muffle their voices.
--Hussani Abdulrahim.
In this collection of ten poignant short stories set in Nigeria, Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi delves into the complexities of identity, community and social justice, offering a profound exploration of personal and social struggles.
In "Ofure," a young man-driven by a recurring dream-embarks on a journey to his hometown where, in a gnawing sense of hope, he believes he would meet with his friend and lover, alive and well. And finally, reconnect with memory and the fissures in his past.
In "A Mother's Love," a woman's life is redefined when her abusive husband dies. Instead of relief, she feels slightly stalled as she struggles to fully adjust to this new loss and to understand her son's nonchalance, to gauge his grief and his reason for being distant.
In "What's The Essence of Beauty," a man renounces the priesthood after many years and returns to the place of his birth, where he must surmount his fears and finally come out to his mother.
With unflinching honesty, these stories tackle love and self-discovery, shedding light on the struggles of women and queer people to be recognized in a society that seeks to muffle their voices.
181 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 22, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Review of advance copy
Such a lovely collection and so heartwarming as well as heartbreaking!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Lives at risk of recognition
Ten stories about people who cannot afford to be known. In While The World Slept, Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi places his characters inside Nigerian families, churches, schools and marriages that demand legibility, then exact a price from whatever they reveal. Nigeria gives that pressure its legal and social frame. Same-sex intimacy carries criminal risk, and public recognition can turn private life into exposure.
The evidence starts with “Ofure”, the collection’s most precisely designed story. Efe returns by boat to the village he left after a childhood bond with another boy was exposed and broken. As he moves through water, dust and old paths, memory lodges in objects before it surfaces as grief.
“A Mother’s Love” moves the damage forward. In a wealthy household, after the death of a violent husband, Nkoli watches her teenage son and begins to understand what her marriage made of him.
The story’s hardest question is brutal: whether staying for a child can itself be one of the ways a child is harmed. “The Thing With Knowledge” presses the same logic into a pastor’s home, where holiness functions as a public mask for private injury.
The title story shifts the field outward. A girl in Borno Yassa moves through a day charged with omens and absence, under poverty and the residual terror of Boko Haram. Where that story opens into collective terror, “Searching For Chisom” pulls back to the personal: a missing young man, a lover who cannot speak freely, a police search that converts grief into exposure risk. Together they show what Onyebuchi can do when private pain meets public danger.
The writing is direct and easy to enter... Read full review: https://www.notesonbooks.net/while-th...
Advance reader copy supplied by BookSirens and Win’s Books Publishing
Ten stories about people who cannot afford to be known. In While The World Slept, Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi places his characters inside Nigerian families, churches, schools and marriages that demand legibility, then exact a price from whatever they reveal. Nigeria gives that pressure its legal and social frame. Same-sex intimacy carries criminal risk, and public recognition can turn private life into exposure.
The evidence starts with “Ofure”, the collection’s most precisely designed story. Efe returns by boat to the village he left after a childhood bond with another boy was exposed and broken. As he moves through water, dust and old paths, memory lodges in objects before it surfaces as grief.
“A Mother’s Love” moves the damage forward. In a wealthy household, after the death of a violent husband, Nkoli watches her teenage son and begins to understand what her marriage made of him.
The story’s hardest question is brutal: whether staying for a child can itself be one of the ways a child is harmed. “The Thing With Knowledge” presses the same logic into a pastor’s home, where holiness functions as a public mask for private injury.
The title story shifts the field outward. A girl in Borno Yassa moves through a day charged with omens and absence, under poverty and the residual terror of Boko Haram. Where that story opens into collective terror, “Searching For Chisom” pulls back to the personal: a missing young man, a lover who cannot speak freely, a police search that converts grief into exposure risk. Together they show what Onyebuchi can do when private pain meets public danger.
The writing is direct and easy to enter... Read full review: https://www.notesonbooks.net/while-th...
Advance reader copy supplied by BookSirens and Win’s Books Publishing
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews