In her new novel, “A Broken Rose” author Uju Amanambu crafts a poignant, stirring tale about a young woman who deals with abuse, alienation and torture from an impoverished and deeply religious village that stigmatizes anything strange.
Taking place in a poor, superstitious village in Eastern Nigeria and in a wealthy suburb of metropolitan Lagos, Nigeria, readers follow a young woman who is ostracized and abused by her ignorant society for being different and thought of as “possessed.” She in truth suffers from mental illness, and without proper treatment she finds herself in a pitfall of disintegration and danger. This touching and resonant story is a call to action, awareness that a person may need proper medical help when they do not conform to societal norms, not isolation, churches or traditional homes.
“A Broken Rose” takes readers on a startling journey from an erosion-ridden, superstitious village, through the practices of a dying pagan religion to the modern world of a wealthy and influential family troubled with secrets as it follows the life of a young woman burdened with the detrimental gravity of mental illness. It is a combination of fiction, stark reality and a call for reform in a society plagued with superstition and religion.