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Chinelo Okparanta was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She received her BS from Pennsylvania State University, her MA from Rutgers University and her MFA from Iowa Writers' Workshop. She teaches at the University of Iowa.
Her novel Happiness Like Water made the exclusive list of Best Books Of 2013?: Our Picks For The Year's Biggest Reads by the highly esteemed Huffington Post and also the latest New Voice in a series on GRANTA.
Read her interview on http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Interview-Chinelo-Okparanta
About Happiness Like Water
A debut story collection of Nigerian women building lives out of longing and hope, faith and doubt, the struggle to stay and the mandate to leave, the burden and strength of love.
A Mariner Original Paperback
In Happiness, Like Water Chinelo Okparanta offers a portrait of Nigeria that is surprising, shocking, heartrending, loving. As Daniyal Mueenuddin brought us everyday Pakistan with In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, so Okparanta brings us life across social strata, dealing in every kind of change.
Among her characters are a young woman faced with a dangerous decision to save her mother, children slick with oil from the river, a woman in love with another despite the penalties. Their world is marked by electricity outages, lush landscapes, folktales, littered roads, Land Rovers, buses that break down and never start up again. They fight their mothers and their husbands, their own shame and their own sexuality, the power of religion and the pull of love.
These are startling, challenging stories filled with language to make your eyes pause and your throat catch. Happiness, Like Water introduces an astonishing talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination.
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