A Tale of Unhinged Women

In her debut collection, A Kind of Madness, Uche Okonkwo examines what it means to be an entity with multiple iterations of desire. Her approach is both intense and masterfully evocative of how multifaceted being human can be. 

Nigerian writer, Chinelo Okparanta, describes Uche Okonkwo’s voice as absorbing. Okparanta, who wrote a blurb for the book, also describes the ten stories in Okonkwo’s newly published short story collection, A Kind of Madness, as tender and playfully haunting. Released by Tin House Books in April 2024, the collection proves itself a clerestory with a profound, revelatory view of the Nigerian life. Buoyed by narratives conveyed in a delicate manner and no less by her virtuosic writing, Okonkwo’s stories revolve around characters whose grip on sanity is tenuous and whose motivations are oftentimes distressing; sometimes, dubious; and at other times, ironic, if not borderline ludicrous...