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Curandera
A cross between Perfume and The Secret History, Curandera explores the darker elements of shamanism, desire and friendship.
In the mountainous town of Gethsemane, a mysterious woman's arrival sparks a series of strange events that will leave the town's inhabitants changed - men sporadically blind in the afternoons, children disappearing and reappearing without warning and infertile women pregnant with the memories of past births.
In London, Therese, a botanist, is quietly on the hunt for a rare form of peyote. Therese lives with three friends in a Victorian house, Azacca, a Haitian musician who leaves offerings, Peruvian drifter Emilien who is haunted by the past and adventurous Finn, who is increasingly drawn to living life on the edge. When Therese discovers she can heal the sick, jealousy and resentment fracture their bond.
In the mountainous town of Gethsemane, a mysterious woman's arrival sparks a series of strange events that will leave the town's inhabitants changed - men sporadically blind in the afternoons, children disappearing and reappearing without warning and infertile women pregnant with the memories of past births.
In London, Therese, a botanist, is quietly on the hunt for a rare form of peyote. Therese lives with three friends in a Victorian house, Azacca, a Haitian musician who leaves offerings, Peruvian drifter Emilien who is haunted by the past and adventurous Finn, who is increasingly drawn to living life on the edge. When Therese discovers she can heal the sick, jealousy and resentment fracture their bond.
- GenresFictionLiterary Fiction
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 16, 2023
11 people are currently reading
3111 people want to read
About the author
Irenosen Okojie
26 books122 followersIrenosen Okojie was born in Nigeria and moved to England aged eight. A freelance Arts Project Manager, she has previously worked at Apples & Snakes as the National Development Coordinator and for The Caine Prize as a Publicity Officer for their 10th Anniversary Tour. Her short stories have been published in the US, Africa and the UK. Her first novel, Butterfly Fish, was published by Jacaranda Books in July 2015.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 3, 2025
Longlisted for the 2025 RSL Ondaatje Prize, for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place
She wound her way through the paths, running her finger over the raised leaf etched on the lighter as though it would come to life in cold salvation. She knew there was no solution for shamans like them, destined to straddle parallel worlds and dimensions while riddled with longings they could spend lifetimes deferring to in however many guises needed to be inhabited.
Curandera is the second novel by the acclaimed short-story writer Irenosen Okojie, a book I have been eagerly anticipating for some time (and whose publication date seemed to slip), since 2.5 years ago when I read her fascinating last story collection Nudibranch.
In my review of that book I quoted the author from a 2019 interview when ask about the surreal nature of her work:
And I said - which was exactly how I felt about this book:
This sense of "spaces where you never really fully comprehend what you’re experiencing but you’re compelled by it, you’re intrigued to keep wanting to know it" is very much what Okojie's writing achieves ... the prose [can be] poetically surreal - the sort of writing that always brings to my mind Invalid Litter Dept by At The Drive In (the exact same song came to mind this time round as well).
It's hard to summarise Curandera and best to let the prose speak for itself.
The novel has two alternating parts. One set in Gethsemane, Cabo Verde, West Africa in the seventeenth century, and narrated by a woman who calls herself Zulmira. After taking part - and fleeing from - a ceremony to the shaman goddess Oni, where she gives birth to a baby with the same face as her own, she appears in the local community, where her powers, and the powers of her kin pursuing her, cause mysterious events in the local community.
It opens:
All pregnant, five of us glimmer on the snaky path towards the low cacophony of the humming creek. Dusky goddesses breached through buried carcasses. We hear gifts turning in the ground's crevices. Barefoot, we sing to Oni, clutching one bone each. Lengthy red beads knock against our chests, the insides of rounded stomachs jostle with the rhythm of parched entities. White markings on our foreheads fade to confuse the forest's traffic. Inky trickles slither from our braided crowns down craned necks. Our nipples are pert against the morning. Behind us, the mountains of Gethsemane loom. A slow mist unfurls to reveal crooked homesteads in its folds, waiting to be shed in a purging between orbs of fire and a fog that will blind the fishermen, that will catch them in their own nets while the sea's creatures buck against the holes in the boats, sharing one eye, as their wives lose their bottom halves in fevered dreams. We sing. The mountains, bruised and magisterial in their morning stupor, absorb our voices, sprawling peaks and troughs dimpled with dew. White cloths wrapped around our waists feel loose on sweat-glazed skin, rustling against our thighs. The hems trailing behind us are pale, movable dawns. We ask our reflections to wait patiently for us in the water, tell floating lilies to be soft landing pads for a small reckoning. We ask the light bending to allow our internal bleeding to leak through our nipples into its axis points. We call Oni to build the golden arch marked with her fingerprints so traces of peyote beneath our tongues will know their inheritance. We dance. We chant, hollering abandons our mouths to chase a fleet-footed spirit marking areas for reinventions between trembling trees. At the bank, we scoop translucent sap from conspiratorial trees. The sky is starting to blush blue. The creek's seductive language threatens to break liquid confines. We call Oni by her name, walk into the water. Form a ring. The water rises, its cold temperature cocooning weeds grazing our feet in the murky depths below. We raise our heads to the heavens as the sky rattles, just as one of us confesses to carrying a foetus that fell from a mountain.
The other part is set in London 2012. Therese, a botanist from Timbuktu, has gathered three people she has identified as kin, carriers of gifts from Oni that have passed down the generations: Azacca, a Haitian musician. Emilien from Peru and Finn, English but with Inuit ancestry.
The four, in peyote-fuelled rituals, are able to travel through time to a utopia they are creating, but also with a breach into 17th century Gethsemane. From the first such trip recorded in the novel, on their return they find a mysterious organism in their shared house - a living rib-cage that bears fruit:
And so, the entity that had attempted to infiltrate their bodies in utopia arrived, an oddly beautiful mutant-like organism which travelled through the breach, taking kinetically charged paths to get there. The traveller, a ribcage blooming fruit, sat on a wooden chopping board at the kitchen worktop in an unfinished display, shrouded by the faint screaming of a girl that lingered in the air. A spill of cumin seeds rolled off the edge, the bread knife was stained with blood, a rusted copper pipe flanked it, forming a haphazard broken circle. Therese stumbled towards it from the hallway as if emerging through a corridor of slippery ground. Her vest and black combats clung to damp skin. Her braids were wet at the tips. Her limbs ached. Her head throbbed. Her fingers felt stiff. Her vision was spotted still. White murmurs from its corners assembled then flattened in a line in her sight. The window flapped open. A breeze shuddered the pink frosted shells on the ledge. Brooding and dark, the night threatened to suck the kitchen's contents into its folds. Finn came from behind her, his gait slower. Like their prior visits to the other plane, they each had ailments to contend with in the aftermath returning from the process of incubation. This time, Finn's injuries were in his chest, a gathering of mouths weeping beneath his black cotton T-shirt. Earlier, Azacca had claimed the silhouette of his heart was floating inside him; tumbling, tugging something in the blood, pumping in his gut before rising again. The slow orchestra of him joining them coalesced with Emilien coming from the downstairs bathroom having vomited in the toilet's alabaster neck. His hands were temporarily webbed, sharp shots of pain hit his knees, legs buckling as he parked his feverish body on a stool. Soft breaths calmed him.
There's a drive to the plot that unfolds in each era, and the links between them, that keeps one invested, yet I would struggle to explain it. But it's another stunning read - if it was available in time a strong Goldsmiths Prize contender, and I'd love to see the Booker judges be brave enough to feature it as well.
She wound her way through the paths, running her finger over the raised leaf etched on the lighter as though it would come to life in cold salvation. She knew there was no solution for shamans like them, destined to straddle parallel worlds and dimensions while riddled with longings they could spend lifetimes deferring to in however many guises needed to be inhabited.
Curandera is the second novel by the acclaimed short-story writer Irenosen Okojie, a book I have been eagerly anticipating for some time (and whose publication date seemed to slip), since 2.5 years ago when I read her fascinating last story collection Nudibranch.
In my review of that book I quoted the author from a 2019 interview when ask about the surreal nature of her work:
I feel it’s in my writing DNA, by that I mean, I can trace it back to those stories I was told as a kid in Benin which were often fantastical so I carried that inside me. It adds other layers and dimensions to the work. It allows me to stretch the boundaries of form and language. I’m curious about in between spaces that appear indefinable, you know those spaces where you never really fully comprehend what you’re experiencing but you’re compelled by it, you’re intrigued to keep wanting to know it. It does that for me. If I’m curious and excited then that reflects in the writing.
And I said - which was exactly how I felt about this book:
This sense of "spaces where you never really fully comprehend what you’re experiencing but you’re compelled by it, you’re intrigued to keep wanting to know it" is very much what Okojie's writing achieves ... the prose [can be] poetically surreal - the sort of writing that always brings to my mind Invalid Litter Dept by At The Drive In (the exact same song came to mind this time round as well).
It's hard to summarise Curandera and best to let the prose speak for itself.
The novel has two alternating parts. One set in Gethsemane, Cabo Verde, West Africa in the seventeenth century, and narrated by a woman who calls herself Zulmira. After taking part - and fleeing from - a ceremony to the shaman goddess Oni, where she gives birth to a baby with the same face as her own, she appears in the local community, where her powers, and the powers of her kin pursuing her, cause mysterious events in the local community.
It opens:
All pregnant, five of us glimmer on the snaky path towards the low cacophony of the humming creek. Dusky goddesses breached through buried carcasses. We hear gifts turning in the ground's crevices. Barefoot, we sing to Oni, clutching one bone each. Lengthy red beads knock against our chests, the insides of rounded stomachs jostle with the rhythm of parched entities. White markings on our foreheads fade to confuse the forest's traffic. Inky trickles slither from our braided crowns down craned necks. Our nipples are pert against the morning. Behind us, the mountains of Gethsemane loom. A slow mist unfurls to reveal crooked homesteads in its folds, waiting to be shed in a purging between orbs of fire and a fog that will blind the fishermen, that will catch them in their own nets while the sea's creatures buck against the holes in the boats, sharing one eye, as their wives lose their bottom halves in fevered dreams. We sing. The mountains, bruised and magisterial in their morning stupor, absorb our voices, sprawling peaks and troughs dimpled with dew. White cloths wrapped around our waists feel loose on sweat-glazed skin, rustling against our thighs. The hems trailing behind us are pale, movable dawns. We ask our reflections to wait patiently for us in the water, tell floating lilies to be soft landing pads for a small reckoning. We ask the light bending to allow our internal bleeding to leak through our nipples into its axis points. We call Oni to build the golden arch marked with her fingerprints so traces of peyote beneath our tongues will know their inheritance. We dance. We chant, hollering abandons our mouths to chase a fleet-footed spirit marking areas for reinventions between trembling trees. At the bank, we scoop translucent sap from conspiratorial trees. The sky is starting to blush blue. The creek's seductive language threatens to break liquid confines. We call Oni by her name, walk into the water. Form a ring. The water rises, its cold temperature cocooning weeds grazing our feet in the murky depths below. We raise our heads to the heavens as the sky rattles, just as one of us confesses to carrying a foetus that fell from a mountain.
The other part is set in London 2012. Therese, a botanist from Timbuktu, has gathered three people she has identified as kin, carriers of gifts from Oni that have passed down the generations: Azacca, a Haitian musician. Emilien from Peru and Finn, English but with Inuit ancestry.
The four, in peyote-fuelled rituals, are able to travel through time to a utopia they are creating, but also with a breach into 17th century Gethsemane. From the first such trip recorded in the novel, on their return they find a mysterious organism in their shared house - a living rib-cage that bears fruit:
And so, the entity that had attempted to infiltrate their bodies in utopia arrived, an oddly beautiful mutant-like organism which travelled through the breach, taking kinetically charged paths to get there. The traveller, a ribcage blooming fruit, sat on a wooden chopping board at the kitchen worktop in an unfinished display, shrouded by the faint screaming of a girl that lingered in the air. A spill of cumin seeds rolled off the edge, the bread knife was stained with blood, a rusted copper pipe flanked it, forming a haphazard broken circle. Therese stumbled towards it from the hallway as if emerging through a corridor of slippery ground. Her vest and black combats clung to damp skin. Her braids were wet at the tips. Her limbs ached. Her head throbbed. Her fingers felt stiff. Her vision was spotted still. White murmurs from its corners assembled then flattened in a line in her sight. The window flapped open. A breeze shuddered the pink frosted shells on the ledge. Brooding and dark, the night threatened to suck the kitchen's contents into its folds. Finn came from behind her, his gait slower. Like their prior visits to the other plane, they each had ailments to contend with in the aftermath returning from the process of incubation. This time, Finn's injuries were in his chest, a gathering of mouths weeping beneath his black cotton T-shirt. Earlier, Azacca had claimed the silhouette of his heart was floating inside him; tumbling, tugging something in the blood, pumping in his gut before rising again. The slow orchestra of him joining them coalesced with Emilien coming from the downstairs bathroom having vomited in the toilet's alabaster neck. His hands were temporarily webbed, sharp shots of pain hit his knees, legs buckling as he parked his feverish body on a stool. Soft breaths calmed him.
There's a drive to the plot that unfolds in each era, and the links between them, that keeps one invested, yet I would struggle to explain it. But it's another stunning read - if it was available in time a strong Goldsmiths Prize contender, and I'd love to see the Booker judges be brave enough to feature it as well.
August 28, 2024
Curandera – Irenosen Okojie
#DialogueBooks
I love literary riddles. Novels that span millennia, challenging the mind with rebirths and resurrections, are firm favourites. Surrealism, magical realism, fantasy, historical fiction, mythology, horror, or the supernatural – bring them on.
The synopsis of this novel ticked all the boxes. In 17th century Verde, West Africa, the arrival of a mysterious woman, Zulmira, in the town of Gethsemane, sparks unexplained phenomena; men went temporarily blind in the afternoons, children disappeared and reappeared, and infertile women fell pregnant. There is an obvious link to a shamanic ceremony to the goddess, Oni, narrated in the opening chapter, and a jump through time to London, 2012, where a botanist, Therese, is tasked with the search for other carriers of the gifts of Oni, finding them in the persons of the Haitian musician, Azacca, the Peruvian drifter, Emilien, and the adventurous Finn.
Interesting as this might sound, the novel turned out to be one of the very few I simply could not finish. There is no character development and no reader involvement or emotion in respect of any character, as they all remain aloof strangers on the peripheral. Their actions are thus unmotivated, and mostly arbiter. Sentences and paragraphs are lengthy, often disjointed and non-consequential, ambiguous and vague, for example: “The thud echoes, snaring the twitching of octopuses carrying stars inside them, foreign signs becoming signatures into the aftermath of blood, the crack of the clay heart in the soil awaiting an impatient touch.” 168)
It came as a surprise to see that it was classified as horror by Fantastic Fiction. I missed that part completely.
This one is not for me.
⭐️ #Uitdieperdsebek
#DialogueBooks
I love literary riddles. Novels that span millennia, challenging the mind with rebirths and resurrections, are firm favourites. Surrealism, magical realism, fantasy, historical fiction, mythology, horror, or the supernatural – bring them on.
The synopsis of this novel ticked all the boxes. In 17th century Verde, West Africa, the arrival of a mysterious woman, Zulmira, in the town of Gethsemane, sparks unexplained phenomena; men went temporarily blind in the afternoons, children disappeared and reappeared, and infertile women fell pregnant. There is an obvious link to a shamanic ceremony to the goddess, Oni, narrated in the opening chapter, and a jump through time to London, 2012, where a botanist, Therese, is tasked with the search for other carriers of the gifts of Oni, finding them in the persons of the Haitian musician, Azacca, the Peruvian drifter, Emilien, and the adventurous Finn.
Interesting as this might sound, the novel turned out to be one of the very few I simply could not finish. There is no character development and no reader involvement or emotion in respect of any character, as they all remain aloof strangers on the peripheral. Their actions are thus unmotivated, and mostly arbiter. Sentences and paragraphs are lengthy, often disjointed and non-consequential, ambiguous and vague, for example: “The thud echoes, snaring the twitching of octopuses carrying stars inside them, foreign signs becoming signatures into the aftermath of blood, the crack of the clay heart in the soil awaiting an impatient touch.” 168)
It came as a surprise to see that it was classified as horror by Fantastic Fiction. I missed that part completely.
This one is not for me.
⭐️ #Uitdieperdsebek
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July 26, 2025Wanna know my thoughts about this novel? Subscribe to Locus!!!!
May 2, 2025
Hard to rate. Okojie's prose is exquisite but the story is weird, confusing and too visceral for my taste. Something about fruity ribcages and birth traumas?
August 17, 2025
This is quite a challenging read and would not be for everybody. I tried very hard to understand what's going on but I think maybe my brain isn't wrinkly enough to process it all. I kept flipping back to the relationship tree provided in front but it didn't help much haha. I got a big headache. But it's interesting and different for sure.
The narrative vacillates between the past and present and all main characters are connected to a goddess, Oni, which grants them powers and puts them on a different plane of existence. I'd hazard to say it's interdimensional. Time fractures, warps, and folds in a way that ensures nothing maintains its form. The idea of stability or linearity doesn't exist. The goddess herself is inscrutable and silent, her intentions only hinted at and her will carried out by her disciples, some named but others menacingly shadowy.
In the past, a woman shows up at a fisherman's house where his wife is dying of a terminal illness and his daughter grows stranger by the day. We know that she is there to serve a higher purpose, but what that could be is concealed from the reader until the very last pages. In the present, four shamans connected to one another via Oni come across a living ribcage that produces berries and water. Their own body parts get broken down and repurposed. It seems complext but it all goes back to something very simple that happened in Gethsemane centuries ago.
The narrative vacillates between the past and present and all main characters are connected to a goddess, Oni, which grants them powers and puts them on a different plane of existence. I'd hazard to say it's interdimensional. Time fractures, warps, and folds in a way that ensures nothing maintains its form. The idea of stability or linearity doesn't exist. The goddess herself is inscrutable and silent, her intentions only hinted at and her will carried out by her disciples, some named but others menacingly shadowy.
In the past, a woman shows up at a fisherman's house where his wife is dying of a terminal illness and his daughter grows stranger by the day. We know that she is there to serve a higher purpose, but what that could be is concealed from the reader until the very last pages. In the present, four shamans connected to one another via Oni come across a living ribcage that produces berries and water. Their own body parts get broken down and repurposed. It seems complext but it all goes back to something very simple that happened in Gethsemane centuries ago.
July 27, 2025
I admittedly had a really difficult time following this, but that may have been a me problem. This focuses on two separate narratives linked by Mexican folklore practice, and that one may have preceded the other, technically. The imagery is gorgeous as hell, but I couldn't tell you anything about the characters or narrative. Worth a library read, though!
June 9, 2025
Incomprehensible
This book defies understanding not because it is complex but because many long words are used incorrectly and as result many sentences are unclear. The unclear sentences are then poorly placed in muddled paragraphs. Regard for time and space is scant: portentousness is all. As a result, the basically conventional fantasy plot becomes incomprehensible.
I find Helen Oyeyemi hard work, but she puts together good sentences. This has all the arbitrary plotting and mystical characterization and none of the writerly skill. Nightmarish. How did it get published?
This book defies understanding not because it is complex but because many long words are used incorrectly and as result many sentences are unclear. The unclear sentences are then poorly placed in muddled paragraphs. Regard for time and space is scant: portentousness is all. As a result, the basically conventional fantasy plot becomes incomprehensible.
I find Helen Oyeyemi hard work, but she puts together good sentences. This has all the arbitrary plotting and mystical characterization and none of the writerly skill. Nightmarish. How did it get published?
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews