Author guide

Helen Oyeyemi Books in Order

Helen Oyeyemi is a British writer born in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1984 and raised in London. She is known for imaginative novels that blend folklore, fairy tale, mythology, psychological fiction, and surrealism, as well as for her short stories and plays.

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Catalog record updated August 25, 2026.

Helen Oyeyemi's Newest Book

A New New Me

novel · First published 2025

Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week. There’s a Kinga for every day: On Mondays, you can catch Kinga-A deleting food delivery apps. By Friday, Kinga-E is happy to spend the days soaking, wine-drunk, in the bath. Kingas A–G, perhaps unsurprisingly, live a varied life—between them is a professional matchmaker, a scent-crazed perfumer, and a window cleaner, all with varying degrees of apathy, anger, introversion, and bossiness. At least three of them are Team Toxic. It’s an arrangement that’s not without its fair share of admin, grudges, and half-truths. But when Kinga-A discovers a man tied up in their apartment, the Kingas have to reckon with the possibility that one of them might be planning to destroy them all. How many versions of oneself can one self safely contain?

Not sure where to begin?

Start with one of these

The Icarus Girl

Her debut novel and a representative introduction to her recurring concerns with doubles, mythology, identity, and the uncanny.

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

A standalone story collection that showcases the breadth of her surreal and folkloric storytelling.

Outside the series

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Novels (9)

The Icarus Girl
novel · 2005

Jessamy "Jess" Harrison, age eight, is the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother. Possessed of an extraordinary imagination, she has a hard time fitting in at school. It is only when she visits Nigeria for the first time that…
The Opposite House
novel · 2007

Lyrical and intensely moving, The Opposite House explores the thin wall between myth and reality through the alternating tales of two young women. Growing up in London, Maja, a singer, always struggled to negotiate her Afro-Cuban…
White Is for Witching
novel · 2009

"Miranda is at home -- homesick, home sick..." As a child, Miranda Silver developed pica, a rare eating disorder that causes its victims to consume nonedible substances. The death of her mother when Miranda is sixteen exacerbates her…
Mr. Fox
novel · 2011

It’s a bright afternoon in 1938 and Mary Foxe is in a confrontational mood. St John Fox, celebrated novelist, hasn’t seen her in six years. He’s unprepared for her afternoon visit, not least because she doesn’t exist. He’s infatuated with…
Boy, Snow, Bird
novel · 2014

From the prizewinning author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Gingerbread, and Peaces comes a brilliant recasting of the Snow White fairy tale as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity. In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak…
Gingerbread
novel · 2019

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Boy Snow Bird, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, and Peaces returns with a bewitching and imaginative novel. Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children’s stories,…
Peaces
novel · 2021

“Enchanting . . . the most surprising, confounding, and oddly insightful couple’s trip in recent literary history.” —Entertainment Weekly The prize-winning, bestselling author of Gingerbread; Boy, Snow, Bird; and What Is Not Yours Is Not…
Parasol Against the Axe
novel · 2024

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Peaces and Gingerbread returns with a novel about competitive friendship, the elastic boundaries of storytelling, and the meddling influence of a city called Prague In Helen Oyeyemi’s joyous new…
A New New Me
novel · 2025

Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week. There’s a Kinga for every day: On Mondays, you can catch Kinga-A deleting food delivery apps. By Friday, Kinga-E is happy to spend the days soaking, wine-drunk, in the bath.…

Short fiction (1)

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
short_story_collection · 2016

The stories collected here 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…

Plays (1)

Juniper's Whitening and Victimese
play_collection · 2005

Frequently asked questions about Helen Oyeyemi

Where was Helen Oyeyemi born and raised?

Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and moved to London with her family at age four. She has lived in London for most of her life.

Source: bloomsbury.com (opens in a new tab)

What is Helen Oyeyemi’s cultural and national background?

She is commonly described as a Nigerian-born British writer. Her work and public discussions often engage questions of identity, belonging, race, and cultural inheritance.

Sources: theguardian.com (opens in a new tab)bloomsbury.com (opens in a new tab)

How did Helen Oyeyemi begin her writing career?

She wrote her first novel while studying for her A levels and secured a publishing deal while still at school. That debut was published when she was 20.

Sources: bloomsbury.com (opens in a new tab)publishersweekly.com (opens in a new tab)

What influences Helen Oyeyemi’s writing?

Her fiction is strongly influenced by fairy tales, fables, folklore, and myth. Oyeyemi has said she is drawn to the musical structure of folktales and uses familiar stories to question ideas about identity, beauty, and social categories.

Sources: publishersweekly.com (opens in a new tab)theguardian.com (opens in a new tab)

What awards and major recognition has Helen Oyeyemi received?

She won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award and the 2017 PEN Open Book Award. She was also named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 2013.

Sources: theguardian.com (opens in a new tab)pen.org (opens in a new tab)granta.com (opens in a new tab)