ONYEKA NWELUE BOOKS

Onyeka Nwelue is a current Academic Visitor at the African Studies Centre at University of Oxford and author of over 11 books, of which The Strangers of Braamfontein (Abibiman Publishing, 2021) is his latest and UK debut.

He is a filmmaker, publisher, talk-show host, bookseller and author whose book Hip-Hop is Only for Children won the Creative Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2015 Nigerian Writers’ Awards. He adapted his novella Island of Happiness into an Igbo-language film, Agwaetiti Obiụtọ, which won Best Feature Film by a Director at the 2018 Newark International Film Festival and went on to be nominated for Best First Feature Film by a Director and the Ousmane Sembene Award for Best Film in an African Language at the 2018 Africa Movie Academy Awards.

Nwelue is the founder of La Cave Musik, a record label based in Paris, France, and co-founded the London-based publishing house Abibiman Publishing.

Nwelue studied Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and earned a scholarship to study Directing at the Prague Film School in Czech Republic.

He is currently a visiting assistant professor and Visiting Fellow of African Literature and studies in the English Language Department of the Faculty of Humanities, Manipur University in Imphal, India. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies, Ohio University, where he spent time in Athens, Ohio.

He was recently a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg.

His second novel, The Beginning of Everything Colourful, was shortlisted for the ANA Prose Fiction Prize in 2018, and his collection of poetry, The Lagos Cuban Jazz Club, was shortlisted for ANA Poetry Prize in the same year.

He is the Founder/Director of The James Currey Prize for African Literature, administered by the Oxford-based James Currey Society.

Onyeka Nwelue was born in 1988. He left for India at 18, where he wrote his first book, The Abyssinian Boy. He is an Academic Visitor at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford and a Visiting Scholar at the Centre of African Studies in the University of Cambridge. He has published over 20 books, including the award-winning novel, The Strangers of Braamfontein, which won Best Indie Novel at 2021 Crime Lovers Award and the 2021 ANA Prose Prize. His latest book, The Real Owners of Britain, traces the trans-generational trauma among immigrants in Britain.