They had not lost anyone that year, or the ones they had lost were not worth remembering… Set in the fictional Kenyan town of Mapeli, Things They Lost tells the story of four generations of women, each haunted by the mysterious curse that hangs over the Brown family.

At the heart of the novel is Ayosa Ataraxis Brown, twelve years old and the loneliest girl in the world. Okwiri Oduor’s stunningly original debut novel sings with Kenyan folklore and myth as it traces Ayosa’s fragile, toxic relationship with Nabumbo Promise, her mysterious and beguiling mother who comes and goes like tumbleweed: lost, but not quite gone.