Eze’s Nigerian family saga goes to #Merky Books

#Merky Books has acquired the debut novel of Tochi Eze, entitled This Kind of Trouble and described as “a powerful and emotive exploration of family and folklore".

Lemara Lindsay-Prince, senior commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Jane Finigan at Lutyens & Rubenstein on behalf of Allison Malecha at Trellis Literary Management. #Merky Books will publish in spring 2025 alongside Lashanda Anakwah at Tiny Reparations Books and Stephanie Sinclair and Anita Chong at McClelland & Stewart.

This Kind of Trouble is described by the publisher as a century-spanning saga following the fateful reunion of a family with ties to a rural Nigerian village and who each bear the consequences of a fateful curse passed down through time. The long-estranged couple – Margaret and Benjamin – should never have married because of the haunting effects of their past and ancestral sins.

Eze, a writer and lawyer from Nigeria whose short story The Americanization of Kambili (Catapult) was named by Longreads as one of 10 outstanding stories to read in 2023, said: "There’s a sense in which I think I have lived many lives, but none in which I imagined that the stories that had been quietly humming in my heart all my life would one day find a beginning in the real world.

“I feel incredibly lucky to partner with Lemara Lindsay-Prince and the good people at #Merky Books to bring this novel to the UK, and I hope that this book, which, summarily, is about the need to escape the shames we inherit from our lineage, offers readers the same wonder my characters showed me – the power of self-definition; the right to imagine a past without limits in order to dream a future without fear."

Lindsay-Prince said: “This Kind Of Trouble to its core is an intergenerational novel set in Nigeria across three distinct time periods. The characters’ lives are rooted in a tragic event – yet it’s the branches of their lives which spring from this moment which drew me in. It’s a masterclass on how much the past has such a fierce grip on the present. It’s such an impressive debut from Tochi, her writing is both precise and powerful and packed with lyricism and emotion.”