Love is Power or Something Like That

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency.

"One of the finest writers around... Known for the raw energy of his prose and characters that feel alive on the page, I encourage you to put this on your list of must-reads for 2013" Guardian "Barrett's artful, unsparing and unsentimental stories confirm the arrival of a major talent." -- Teju Cole, author of Open City "It left me in tears. He is the most exciting writer producing right now. He has an incredible range, a unique voice, and has the power to move." -- Binyavanga Wainaina "A. Igoni Barrett is a writer who has succeeded in making colloquial literature without seeking spurious attention by vulgar daring. Here is a reader's entry to hearing on the page how contemporary communication, not only in his Nigeria, can be inventive. Love Is Power, or Something Like That is, to paraphrase its title: something alive, like that" -- Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Booker and Nobel Prize for Literature "A. Igoni Barrett does for Lagos what Chekhov did for Saint Petersburg and what Joyce did for Dublin, namely, to give a real face to a place that is too often maligned or mythologized" -- Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Rails Under My Back and Holding Pattern