Oyinkan Braithwaithe has a book coming out in 2021
For World Literacy Day, The Reading Agency unveiled the book covers of their next Quick Reads installment, of which Oyinkan Braithwaithe’s new book is part of.
See cover:
The book titled, The Baby is Mine (Atlantic) is one among the six scheduled for release by The Reading Agency on 27 May, 2021. All titles in the instalment will go for just £1 upon release and free to borrow from libraries, colleges, prisons, trade unions, hospitals and adult learning organisations across the UK.
The Baby is Mine follows the story of Bambi, whose girlfriend throws him out during the pandemic. Bambi has no choice but to go to his Uncle’s house in lock-down Lagos. When he arrives, he’s surprised to find his Aunty Bidemi locked in battle with another woman, both claiming to be the mother of a baby boy. Who is lying and who is telling the truth?
Published by Atlantic books, it is a novella and will be coming out alongside five others in the 2021 Quick Reads instalment.
Launched in 2006, Quick Reads is a a project by The Reading Agency to improve readership among adults in the UK. According to a finding by the agency, “One in six adults in the UK find reading difficult and one in three do not regularly read for pleasure.”
Quick Reads has since inception tried to change the narrative by providing shorter fictions every year at very low rates and making copies available at libraries, further education institutions, prisons and trade unions, to help thousands of new readers every year find the pleasure and benefits that come from reading. Since then, over 5 million Quick Reads books have been distributed across the UK.
"When I am writing, I don’t know what my readers will look like or what challenges they may be facing. So it was an interesting experience creating work with the understanding that the reader might need a story that was easy to digest, and who might not have more than a few hours in a week to commit to reading. It was daunting - simpler does not necessarily mean easier - I may have pulled out a couple of my hairs; but I would do it again in a heartbeat. Quick Reads tapped into my desire to create fiction that would be an avenue for relief and escape for all who came across it."
Oyinkan Braithwaite, on her experience writing “The Baby is Mine” for Quick Reads.
Other titles in the 2021 Quick Reads instalment include, The Skylight by Louise Candlish (Simon & Schuster), Saving the Day by Katie Fforde (Arrow), Wish You Were Dead by Peter James (Macmillan), How to Be a Woman, abridged by Caitlin Moran (Ebury), and The Motive by Khurrum Rahman (HQ).
Oyinkan Braithwaithe is a Nigerian award-winning writer. In July, her short story, Treasure was featured in a collection of short fictions by Thriller best-selling authors called Hush. Her debut, My Sister, the Serial Killer won the 2019 LA Times Award for Best Crime Thriller, the 2019 Morning News Tournament of Books, the 2019 Amazon Publishing Reader’s Award for Best Debut Novel, the 2019 Anthony Award for Best First Novel, 2020 British Books Awards for Crime/Thriller Book of the Year among others. It was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, shortlisted for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2019 in the Mystery & Thriller and Debut Novel categories, shortlisted for the British Book Awards 2020 in two categories, shortlisted for the Cameo Awards 2020 in the Book to Audio category, and shortlisted for Book Bloggers' Choice Awards 2020. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2019, and longlisted for the 2020 Dublin Literary Award. My Sister, the Serial Killer is being translated into 30 languages and has also been optioned for film.
