Exquisitely written and deeply absorbing, this debut from Caine Prize–winning author Olufemi Terry captures the heady abandon of early adulthood in a country still reeling from the lasting effects of racial partition and colonialism.

When his father suggests that he take some time off to visit his cousin, Emil—a young surgeon-in-training—doesn’t ask many questions. For reasons he doesn’t yet understand, he sets aside his studies and moves into his aunt’s house in Stadmutter, a remote multiracial African city. There, he is disquieted by days of unaccustomed aimlessness and by encounters with Bolling, a wealthy foreigner who woos him intellectually and sexually, and Tamsin, a psychology student working to define herself against the fading privilege of her background.

Beneath a veneer of indolence, Stadmutter seethes. Bolling is covertly working with Braeem Shaka, an advocate for reparations, to foment racial tension that imperils the country’s fragile progress. As Shaka becomes a wanted man, Emil and Tamsin grow entangled in his future and that of a country they are both eager to escape.