Pastor Nicholas Adejuwon and his beautiful wife Nkechi run Rivers of Joy Church, the rave-of-the-moment Lagos megachurch. The media-savvy supercouple project the picture of a perfect family and a prosperous church. However, there are scandalous secrets hidden under the surface. When Nkechi decided to investigate her husband’s rumored indiscretion, it was merely to satisfy her curiosity. What she unravels is a web of bruising secrets that run deeper than she could ever imagine, threatening her reality as she knows it. Believers and Hustlers is an exposé on the underbelly of Nigeria’s Pentecostal fervor and the lives of rich celebrity posterity preachers, their motivations, rivalries, pretenses, and fears. This bold novel tells an important story about our times – the quest for power, the fears that trigger it, the hypocrisy that sustains it – and how religion can be weaponized to shroud it all in a mystery. At its core, however, it’s a story of life, of love, power, and the ironies that fate often deals us at the end of our desperate quests.
ISBN: 9781957810027
Paperback
350 pages
5.25x8.0
"Ifedigbo can stand on the same podium as masters like Gurcharan Das. What makes his writing plain and unique at the same time, is the elegance of his prose. He writes with such clarity, that one does not need to be told that he is one of the best storytellers of his generation."
~Onyeka Nwelue, author of The Strangers of Braamfontein
"Believers and Hustlers is the contemporary Nigerian novel, doing on the page what Wole Soyinka’s Jero plays did on the stage. Mr. Ifedigbo’s writerly instincts probe, with uncanny accuracy, the religion-media matrix and the result is a milestone of a book, a book with a passport into most of Africa."
~Tade Ipadeola, author of The Sahara Testaments R
“The complex plot complements the vividly rendered setting. Fans of crime novels centered on wrongdoing in powerful religious institutions, such as Mette Ivie Harrison’s books, will be riveted”
~Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
“Quite a compelling thriller that got me gripping my tablet.”
~Ekila Bontole - Bookseller
“Author Ifedigbo isn’t simply out to provide entertainment. In his bio, he says “the calling of a writer is to study humans explicitly and document this in simple, memorable stories.” He’s done that well. Believers and Hustlers is a study of the desperation caused by political, social, and economic corruption.”
~Andrew Diamond, writer at Mystery & Suspense Magazine
“The name Believers and Hustlers, by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo, is absolutely the perfect description for this book! While this book was written about Nigeria, it's also a perfect commentary on the celebrity pastors and the megachurches around the U.S. and the world.”
~Jill Tatter
“This was my first novel by a Nigerian author and I enjoyed it. The author adopts a teasing yet indulgent tone towards his characters, and towards the culture as a whole, their foibles and eccentricities, describing the easy manner in which people pick up foreign accents…I highly recommend this one.”
~Cynthia Rodrigues
“The book is well balanced on humor, mystery and culture. The author did a wonderful job of pacing the book and character development.”
~Ancillar Grace
Set against the impending arrival of President Obama to Kenya, Truth is a Flightless Bird, a crime novel, is an exploration of colonialism and current imperial and capitalist structures that create and perpetuate violence
This bold novel tells an important story about our times – the quest for power, the fears that trigger it, the hypocrisy that sustains it – and how religion can be weaponized to shroud it all in a mystery.
Members of the Institute for the Archeology of Human Thought unearth the bones of Gara, a young man, whose Myelin will unravel the secrets of his ancient consciousness.