Canongate Books to Publish TADUNO'S SONG by Odafe Atogun

Canongate Books has acquired world rights in Taduno's Song, a Kafkaesque Nigerian tale by debut novelist Odafe Atogun. Louisa Joyner, Editorial Director of Fiction at Canongate acquired the debut as part of a two book deal from Toby Mundy at Toby Mundy Associates. Canongate will publish in trade paperback in summer 2016.

Taduno's Song sees Atogun tackle major universal themes of resistance in the face of a dictatorship's oppression, with a deceptively simple, gripping and haunting Kafkaesque narrative. In the background liehints at the incredible life of Fela Kuti, human rights activist and Nigeria's greatest singing superstar, who regularly clashed with the authoritarian Nigerian regimes of the 1970s and 1980s.

The novel follows African singer Taduno, who returns from political exile to the country of his birth to find that the dictatorship's efforts to erase all trace of him have been so successful that he has been entirely forgotten, even by his closest friends and neighbours. But one man remembers: the country's dictator. And upon his return home Taduno discovers its leader has imprisoned the woman he loves and will murder her unless he performs in support of the regime. Taduno must make an impossible choice: fight the power or save the woman he loves. Taduno's Song is a story of sacrifice, love and redemption, from an utterly fresh new literary voice.

Louisa Joyner, Editorial Director of Fiction at Canongate Books said: "Taduno's Song is a story of one man and a community of people who have chosen to forget him. I realise I've become one of those people. I had forgotten that novels written and shared can make me want to determine the course of political events. They can make me want to save people. Odafe Atogun sincerely believes this and it's his sincerity I'm humbled to be publishing. I won't forget again."

Odafe Atogun was born in Nigeria, in the town of Lokoja, where the Rivers Niger and Benue meet, but hails from Edo State. Now a full-time writer, he is married and lives in Abuja.