Thursday, January 27, 2011

Top ten immigrants' tales

E. C. Osondu was born in Nigeria. He won the 2009 Caine Prize for African Writing, and his fiction has appeared in The Atlantic. He received his MFA from Syracuse University and currently teaches at Providence College in Rhode Island.

His debut story collection Voice of America was published by HarperCollins late last year.

At the Guardian he named his top 10 immigrants' tales.

One title on the list:
On Black Sisters' Street by Chika Unigwe

Someone once pointed out to me some really splendid buildings in Nigeria and proudly announced that they were built by hardworking Nigerian girls who were working really hard in Italy. I would have liked to have given him this novel, which chronicles the harrowing lives of young African prostitutes in Europe and what they have to sacrifice and suffer to put up that huge mansion that this fellow was ever so proud to point out to me.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Matthew Kaminski's five best novels about immigrants in America.

--Marshal Zeringue