Uchenna Awoke

A Siege of Owls

A Novel

An urgent and unforgettable work of magical realism following a young man coming of age in rural West Africa as he bears witness to the violence, upheaval, and hope in a rapidly changing society

In a drought-stricken Igbo village, young Ekwe grows up haunted by owls, myths, and the boundaries of a world too small to contain his restless spirit. After touching a forbidden leaf that his father warns will trap him in astral planes, he is swept into a journey that will carry him across Nigeria, through savannas, deserts, and conflict zones, and into the heart of a nation’s unraveling.

Taken in by Danjuma, a gentle Fulani cowherd with a sprawling family and an instinct for danger, Ekwe enters a world of cattle herding, migration, and precarious survival. As insurgents tear through northern towns and tribal wars erupt in the Middle Belt, Danjuma leads his family on an epic pastoral flight southward, seeking safety in a country where no place is truly safe. Along the way, Ekwe witnesses birth and burial, kindness and betrayal, and the fragile alliances that form between strangers bound by necessity.

But violence follows them like a shadow, and the owls—symbols of myth, menace, and prophecy—perch over every new beginning. Back in his own village, Ekwe’s twelve-year-old sister is pressured to marry a wealthy adult suitor. Ekwe becomes obsessed with how much their lives would improve if she married this man, but Oyibo, stubborn and proud, resists the path that is laid out for her. Meanwhile, simmering tensions between herders and farmers threaten to ignite, forcing Ekwe to confront the truth of where he belongs.

Sweeping, immersive, and fiercely humane, A Siege of Owls traces a child’s odyssey across a fractured landscape, weaving folklore with the stark realities of insurgency, displacement, and the longing for home. It is a story of two families—one lost, one gained—bound together by fate, resilience, and the dangerous hope that somewhere, peace still exists.

The Liquid Eye of a Moon

A Novel

A Nigerian Catcher in the Rye, Uchenna Awoke’s masterful debut breaks the silence about a hidden and dangerous contemporary caste system

Fifteen-year-old Dimkpa dreams of the day his father will be made village head. He will return to school and maybe even go on to university; his mother will no longer have to break her back foraging wild food to sell at market; they will have the money to build a fine tomb for his aunt Okike; and his family’s status as ohu ma, the lowest Igbo caste, won’t matter anymore. But when his father is passed over for a younger man, breaking tradition, Dimkpa realizes that he must make his own fate.

Journeying from his small village in rural Nigeria, to Lagos, Awka, and home again, Dimkpa learns that no money is easy money, that superstition runs deep, that knowledge is power, and that sometimes it is better to live in the present than to always be chasing a future just out of reach.

The Liquid Eye of a Moon is by turns hilarious and poignant, capturing all the messiness of adolescence, and the difficulty of making your own way in a world that seeks to oppress you.