Tochi Eze

A riveting, emotionally-charged tale of forbidden love, centred on an estranged couple who are brought together to reckon with the events that tore their family apart decades ago. In 1960s Lagos, a city enlivened with its newfound Independence, headstrong Margaret meets British-born Benjamin, a man seeking his ancestral roots after the death of his half-Nigerian father. Their connection is immediate, but as the two begin to fall in love, they discover that their pasts are more interwoven than they imagined due to a series of devastating events that transpired in their ancestral community. The shadow of these events, combined with Margaret's deteriorating mental health eventually tear them apart. By 2005, the couple have been estranged for forty years. Margaret has retired to an upscale gated community in Lagos, and seemingly happy Benjamin lives alone in Atlanta, managing his heart problems but feeling unmoored when faced with the question of who to name as his next of kin. But their attempt at a settled life is shattered when their grandson begins to show ominous signs that echo the struggles Margaret once faced. Now, Margaret and Benjamin must finally reunite to confront the buried secrets that they had dismissed in the passion of their youth-secrets that continue to ripple through their family. Their reunion becomes a journey into the past-one that forces them to grapple with both the personal and ancestral burdens that have followed them through generations. A startling and propulsive tale of forbidden love, THIS KIND OF TROUBLE traces the intertwined legacies of one family's history, exploring the complex relationship between tradition, modernity and the ways we seek healing in a changing world. Spanning a tumultuous century, the story moves us to consider the ways we are beholden to the past and what we owe the future. With this debut novel, Tochi Eze announces herself as a dazzling new literary voice in world literature.

‘Where are the fragments of the life you have lived?’2005In Atlanta, Benjamin, a white-passing man of Nigerian heritage, is wondering what his life has been made up of, broken relationships, attempts to forge an identity from others’ memories.In Lagos, Margaret, a Nigerian single mother, is trying to decipher and finally destroy the mental malaise that has troubled her for as long as she can remember, by winding her way through a complex family history.Though they are no longer the twenty-somethings they once were when they met, and the 40 years that have passed since they last saw one another might suggest they are strangers, there is a deep and unsettling history that has bound them together since long before they were born.1905A well-respected chief in Umumilo village, Nigeria, Okolo has always followed tradition. Then three of the young village women – including his sister, who follows the white man’s God – are shrouded in scandal, and Okolo is forced to choose which path to take: that of least resistance, embracing the ways of the white man to save his village and his sister’s pride, or the other, preserving the ways that have sustained generations – but at what cost?A beautifully crafted multi-generational story of family history and identity, This Kind of Trouble is a powerful debut that asks what makes up a life, and how when it’s broken, we might put it together again.