An Orchestra of Minorities Audiobook By Chigozie Obioma cover art

An Orchestra of Minorities

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

An Orchestra of Minorities

By: Chigozie Obioma
Narrated by: Chukwudi Iwuji
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $35.09

Buy for $35.09

A heartbreaking story about a Nigerian poultry farmer who sacrifices everything to win the woman he loves, by Man Booker Finalist and author of The Fishermen, Chigozie Obioma.

"It is more than a superb and tragic novel; it's a historical treasure."-Boston Globe

Set on the outskirts of Umuahia, Nigeria and narrated by a chi, or guardian spirit, An Orchestra of Minorities tells the story of Chinonso, a young poultry farmer whose soul is ignited when he sees a woman attempting to jump from a highway bridge. Horrified by her recklessness, Chinonso joins her on the roadside and hurls two of his prized chickens into the water below to express the severity of such a fall. The woman, Ndali, is stopped her in her tracks.

Bonded by this night on the bridge, Chinonso and Ndali fall in love. But Ndali is from a wealthy family and struggles to imagine a future near a chicken coop. When her family objects to the union because he is uneducated, Chinonso sells most of his possessions to attend a college in Cyprus. But when he arrives he discovers there is no place at the school for him, and that he has been utterly duped by the young Nigerian who has made the arrangements... Penniless, homeless, and furious at a world which continues to relegate him to the sidelines, Chinonso gets further away from his dream, from Ndali and the farm he called home.

Spanning continents, traversing the earth and cosmic spaces, and told by a narrator who has lived for hundreds of years, the novel is a contemporary twist of Homer's Odyssey. Written in the mythic style of the Igbo literary tradition, Chigozie Obioma weaves a heart-wrenching epic about destiny and determination. Literary Fiction World Literature Genre Fiction Heartfelt Tearjerking Coming of Age Historical Fiction

Critic reviews

"This is a book that wrenches the heart with its story of love, migration and inner turmoil, told with remarkable language from start to finish. Narrated by a cast of characters from Igbo spiritual tradition, the story of Chinonso, the chicken farmer begins and ends with tragedy. But his quest for a life with Ndali, the woman he loves, drives him to seek status and wealth as an African migrant in Europe, to transcend Nigeria's formidable class boundaries. The spirits look down on these human dramas of small town Nigeria and reveal the rich complexity of another realm along the way. Obioma's is a tale of Odyssian proportions that makes the heart soar, and a crucial journey into a heartache that is both mythical and real. A stunning book."—Booker Prize 2019 Jury citation
"Gorgeously written, with a twist of magical realism and a heavy dose of sad reality."—Washington Post
"Transcendent . . . Chigozie Obioma's second novel is a rare treasure: a book that deepens the mystery of the human experience."—Seattle Times
"Igbo and Greek mythology are braided into this heartbreaking and utterly unique novel"—Boris Kacka, Vulture
"Obioma's frenetically assured second novel is a spectacular artistic leap forwards . . . [it is] a linguistically flamboyant, fast-moving, fatalistic saga of one man's personal disaster . . . Few contemporary novels achieve the seductive panache of Obioma's heightened language, with its mixture of English, Igbo and colourful African-English phrases, and the startling clarity of the dialogue. The story is extreme; yet its theme is a bid for mercy for that most fragile of creatures - a human" —Eileen Battersby, Guardian
"Brilliantly intertwining the human and spirit worlds. A major new African writer."—Salman Rushdie
"A mystical epic...confirms his place among a raft of literary stars." —Time
"Obioma writes with an exigent precision that makes AN ORCHESTRA OF MINORITIES feel at once timely and speculative. The novel aches with Chinonso. His triumphs are rare and hard-won. Obioma compels the reader to root for him, to see the poor chicken farmer's story as an epic."—The Atlantic
"It is more than a superb and tragic novel; it's a historical treasure."
—Boston Globe
"It's a story as old as the epic."—New York Times Book Review
"Obioma's novel remains interesting and important"—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The chances that Chigozie Obioma's second novel would match, let alone surpass, "The Fishermen," were slim. Happily, his follow-up, AN ORCHESTRA OF MINORITIES, is a triumph. . . . In an era of copycats, "An Orchestra of Minorities" is an unusual and brilliantly original book."—The Economist
"His is a bracing and searing work that compresses an ordinary life into an epic journey."—Houston Chronicle

Featured Article: The Best British Narrators


If you're looking for an audiobook in an accent, check out these listens from our favorite British narrators. Authenticity is something many listeners value in their audiobook experiences, and that often boils down to narration style and accents. Although so many audiobooks are narrated by many talented actors with wide ranges, sometimes it's just nice to listen to an audiobook performed by someone in their native accent. If you're searching for the best British narrators, look no further. We’ve done the tough job of picking just ten of our favorite British narrators that you'll love listening to.

Featured Article The Best British Narrators
Beautiful Writing • Emotional Storytelling • Pitch Perfect Narration • Compelling Love Story • Spiritual Elements

Highly rated for:

All stars
Most relevant
The best book I have listened to in years, like was poetry to my ears. This author's writing is so captivating and he has such a skill for beautifully unraveling a multilayered and complex story with such intricate details..... I enjoyed all of it and so happy I found this book!

just exquisite!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
From the first page I was delighted by the imaginative story-telling and characters. It is hard to tell if the tragedy comes from within the protagonist or from his surroundings. The beauty of this story is how they keep you guessing who this person is that we have been reading about the whole time.

Inventive Modern Tragedy

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is a multi-layered story in which the protagonist's actions in life are narrated by his chi, or spirit, so the reader is seeing and experiencing Chinonso's life from two simultaneous vantage points: From the meta-level of the spirit, and from the interior world of Chinonso, as described by the spirit. One reviewer commented on how this narrative device keeps us at a remove from the inner workings of Chinonso's mind, and I agree with that, but since Chinonso is basically possessed by and obsessed with his lover, Ndali, the inner workings of his mind seem to run in an endless loop anyway, with only occasional glimpses of reality, so I think the narrative device works well. However, Chinonso's obsession frustrates his chi, and frustrated this reader as well. Have you ever read or watched Othello or Romeo and Juliet, for example, and had the strong desire to yell "Don't do it! Can't you see how stupid you're being?" There are moments like that in abundance in this book. There are long sections, particularly when Chinonso travels to Cyprus to attend college, in which the narrative moves along quickly and sparks with interest. There are other sections, particularly the final two hours of the audiobook, in which the narrative drags into a kind of grinding and painful repetitiveness, and I wanted the chi's observations to stick with the story, and quit with the spirit world stuff. But overall, Obioma's brilliance and energy and vision carry the day. However, in truth, I preferred his earlier novel, "The Fisherman," which was a tour de force. In both novels, the narrator is pitch-perfect and makes the listening experience pure joy.

Deep, fascinating, brilliant, frustrating.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Started out very complex, understanding the ‘chi’. Got me engaged after the first 3 chapters. Awesome author as always. Nonso I don’t think I can forgive you! Yes love was unfair to you but you are selfish

Complexity

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I previously read the fisherman by chigoze obioma and loved it, I expected this book to be as appealing or even more, but i was disappointed. I did love the book, especially the way the author incorporated the so called chi, but i found the story to be exhausting in many ways. i couldn't connect to the main character, he just seemed to be spineless, predictable and boring. the main female character wasn't explored enough and the focus on the least interesting parts while skipping others, didn't make much sense to me.

good but not great

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews