What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Helen Oyeyemi

3.63 based on 6340 ratings & 1091 reviews on Goodreads.com

2017 Long-listed

International Dylan Thomas Prize

Synopsis

'Pure, sensuous enjoyment' The Times

The stories collected in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours are linked by more than the exquisitely winding prose of their creator: Helen Oyeyemi's ensemble cast of characters slip from the pages of their own stories only to surface in another.

The reader is invited into a world of lost libraries and locked gardens, of marshlands where the drowned dead live and a city where all the clocks have stopped; students hone their skills at puppet school, the Homely Wench Society commits a guerrilla book-swap, and lovers exchange books and roses on St Jordi's Day.

It is a collection of towering imagination, marked by baroque beauty and a deep sensuousness.

In the media

[Oyeyemi] has come up with something unique, keeping pace with a modern mixed-up world

Daily Telegraph

The stories in this collection are poetic and puzzling . . . get ready to tumble through the doors of this beautifully challenging and satisfying collection

NPR

Dizzying, baffling, and beguiling . . . unruly in the best way, drawing on pre-modern modes of story-telling (fairy tales, Boccaccio, The Arabian Nights) to show they've lost none of their power in the present

Vulture

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