What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

'Remarkable range and exquisite prose' Ayobami Adebayo, Guardian Books of the Year

A stunning collection of short stories from Caine-Prize shortlisted and Commonwealth Writer's Prize winner Lesley Nneka Arimah, WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY has been described as 'luminous' (Roxane Gay), 'mesmeric' (Claire Vaye Watkins) and 'hilarious and heartbreaking' (Rowan Hisayo Buchanan). Shot through with magic and a powerful sense of yearning, this is a diverse and dazzling collection that showcases the work of a major new talent at the beginning of a stellar literary career.

'When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters'. The daughters, wives and mothers in Lesley Nneka Arimah's remarkable debut collection find themselves in extraordinary situations: a woman whose mother's ghost appears to have stepped out of a family snapshot, another who, exhausted by childlessness, resorts to fashioning a charmed infant out of human hair, a 'grief worker' with a miraculous ability to remove emotional pain - at a price. What unites them is the toughness of the world they inhabit, a world where the future is uncertain, opportunities are scant, and fortunes change quicker than the flick of a switch. Characterised by their vividness, immediacy and the author's seemingly endless ability to conjure worlds at once familiar and unsettlingly different, this is 'a remarkable debut from a writer I'm sure we'll be reading for years to come' (Aimee Bender).