A Bit of Difference: Sefi Atta's Latest Novel

Sefi Atta is the author of  the novels Swallow and Everything Good Will Come, and a collection of short stories, News from Home. She has been awarded the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature and the NOMA Award. Sefi Atta was a guest author at the Garden City Literary Festival in 2010, and she said the following of her her experience there: "This literary Festival was the best I've ever attended."

On A Bit of Difference
In this interview on Publishers Weekly, she speaks about the opening of the novel: "I begin it with a short description of the poster of an African woman advertising a charity, and the rest of the novel is a profile of Deola, a young Nigerian woman who notices the poster at an airport. Her views are similar to mine: If the occasional stereotype is all she has to deal with as an African woman, then she is fortunate. I don’t set out to challenge Western perceptions of Africa, but I might by writing honestly."

Dialogue Series attempts a synopsis of the novel: At thirty-nine, Deola Bello, a Nigerian expatriate in London, is dissatisfied with being single and working overseas. Deola works as a financial reviewer for an international charity, and when her job takes her back to Nigeria in time for her father's five-year memorial service, she finds herself turning her scrutiny inward. In Nigeria, Deola encounters changes in her family and in the urban landscape of her home, and new acquaintances who offer unexpected possibilities. Deola's journey is as much about evading others' expectations to get to the heart of her frustration as it is about exposing the differences between foreign images of Africa and the realities of contemporary Nigerian life. Deola's urgent, incisive voice captivates and guides us through the intricate layers and vivid scenes of a life lived across continents. With Sefi Atta's characteristic boldness and vision, A Bit of Difference limns the complexities of our contemporary world.

Praise for A Bit of Difference

"Atta's splendid writing sizzles with wit and compassion. This is an immensely absorbing book." —Chika Unigwe, author of On Black Sisters Street

"Like Teju Cole’s Open City, Deola’s story is low on drama but rich in life, though Atta’s third-person voice makes less for a portrait of a mind in transit than a life caught in freeze-frame, pinned between two continents and radiating pathos. Wholly believable, especially in its nuanced approach to racial identity, the story feels extremely modern while excelling at the novelist’s traditional task: finding the common reality between strangers and rendering alien circumstances familiar" —Publisher's Weekly