The Edge of Water - Paperback

by Olufunke Grace Bankole (Author)

Winner of the Westport Prize for Literature
Winner of the Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award

Finalist for New American Voices Award, Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Oregon Book Award

Longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award

Best Book of the Year at TIME, Apple, Debutiful, Electric Literature, Well-Read Black Girl, Chicago Review of Books, and Goodreads

Afrocritik Notable African Book of 2025
Brittle Paper 100 Notable African Books of 2025

Best Book of the Month at Oprah Daily, Apple Books, Alta Journal, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, The Roots, Write or Die, and Southern Review of Books

Set between Nigeria and New Orleans, The Edge of Water tells the story of a young woman who dreams of life in America, as the collision of traditional prophecy and individual longing tests the bonds of a family during a devastating storm.

In Ibadan, Nigeria, a mother receives a divination that foretells danger for her daughter in America. In spite of this warning, she allows her to forge her own path, and Amina arrives in New Orleans filled with hope. But just as Amina begins to find her way, a hurricane threatens to destroy the city, upending everything she'd dreamed of and the lives of all she holds dear. Years later, her daughter is left with questions about the mother she barely knew, and the family she has yet to discover in Nigeria.

Exploring the love of a determined mother and dreaming daughter who do not say enough to each other until it is too late, the detangling of Yoruba Christianity, traditional religion, and folklore, and the tellings of three generations of daring women--through times of longing, promise, and romance, as well as heartbreak--Olufunke Grace Bankole's The Edge of Water is a luminous debut novel about a young woman brave enough to leave all she knows behind, and the way her fate transforms a family destined to stay together.

Author Biography

Olufunke Grace Bankole is the author of The Edge of Water (Tin House Books, 2025), winner of the Westport Prize for Literature and the Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award, and a Best Book of the Year at TIME, Apple Books, Electric Literature, Chicago Review of Books, Debutiful, Well-Read Black Girl, and more. The Edge of Water was also longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and named a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, the New American Voices Award, the CLMP Firecracker Awards, the Pacific Northwest Book Awards, and the Oregon Book Awards. It has been widely praised, including by Oprah Daily, Goodreads, Ms., Book Riot, Brittle Paper, The Root, and The Lagos Review. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Bankole has published work in numerous journals, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train Stories, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, and The Antioch Review. She won the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers and has received honors and support from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Oregon Literary Fellowship Program, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.