Fifteen-year-old Andrew Aziza lives in Kontagora, Nigeria, where his days are spent about town with his droogs, Slim and Morocca, grappling with his fantasies about white girls – especially blondes – and wondering who his father is. When he’s not in church, at school or attempting to form ‘Africa’s first superheroes’, he obsesses over mathematical theorems, ideas of black power and HXVX: the Curse of Africa.

Sure enough, the reluctantly nicknamed ‘Andy Africa’ soon falls hopelessly and inappropriately in love with the first white girl he lays eyes on, Eileen. But at the church party held to celebrate her arrival, multiple crises loom. An unfamiliar man claims, despite his mother’s denials, to be Andy’s father, and the gathering of an anti-Christian mob is headed for the church – both set to shake the foundations of everything Andy knows and loves.

The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa announces a dazzling, distinctive, new literary voice. Profound, exhilarating and highly original, this tragicomic novel is a stunning exploration of the contemporary African ‘condition’, the relentless infiltration of Western culture and, most of all, the ordinary but impossible challenges of coming of age in a turbulent world.

This novel is at once funny and heartbreaking. Most importantly, it’s honest ― De’Shawn Charles Winslow, author of Decent People and In the West Mills

An assured debut . . . [Buoro] brings Andy’s world to life with such immediacy ― Independent

A barnstorming, heartbreaking debut . . . Tackling the perils of carving out a unique identity in a world of carnage and confusion, in the shadow of colonialism, this assured, engaging book, will make you fall in love with teenager Andy Aziza, and will undoubtedly make a star of Stephen Buoro ― Harper’s Bazaar, Highlights for 2023

The pleasure here is as much in the journey as the destination, with sex, terrorism and, er, catechisms in the mix. Buoro has energy to burn ― Independent

A blazing debut ― smart, subversive, funny, heartbreaking. I’m already impatient for Buoro’s next book. ― Kamila Shamsie

An exhilarating, tragicomic novel that questions what it means to come of age in Nigeria today . . . A voice unlike any other. ― Observer

Fascinating; unashamedly, brilliantly intelligent. ― Sarah Perry

The vivid immediacy of Buoro’s prose is transporting, his similes as alive as the scenes he paints . . . [Buoro’s] writing deserves to inspire a generation of superheroes. ― Times

This novel exudes a wonderfully vivid sense of place and leads the reader inside the head of its teenage hero . . . It’s a narrative of depth that also manages to be instantly engaging. ― Ian Rankin

I fell in love with this novel immediately. [It has] hilarious energy, a satirical but also wildly ambitious philosophical framework. It’s eccentric, profound, timely, specific but it also has global concerns and a really, really brilliant central character. ― Max Porter

Buoro is a writer of imagination and flair . . . His sentences are mad, boisterous, incantatory – and, in a continent where rhythm is as common as praying, quite singular. The prose on any page could only be his. And Andy Africa is an unforgettable character. ― Economist

A smart and incisive coming-of-age tragicomedy. ― i

This ticks all the boxes of a literary blockbuster . . . Buoro commits to representing diversity within Blackness, the way Toni Morrison does. ― Guardian

Beautiful, intelligent and heart-wrenching. ― NoViolet Bulawayo, author of Glory and We Need New Names