This month’s featured titles include a debut novel and a nonfiction book about the comedy troupe Firesign Theater, both by A&S authors.
The Edge of Water
Olufunke Grace Bankole ’01
“Bankole debuts with a beautiful narrative about two Nigerian women who seek independence from their patriarchal culture,” says Publishers Weekly in a starred review, calling the novel “one to savor.”

The plot follows a mother and daughter: the elder, a rape victim who was coerced into marrying her attacker, wants a better life for her child—who grows up to dream of living in the U.S. despite a prophecy that she’ll encounter danger there. The daughter’s story eventually takes her to New Orleans, where she becomes a single mother and struggles to survive during Hurricane Katrina.
Kirkus calls Bankhole’s book a “global, multigenerational novel suffused with heart, feeling, devastation, and hope” while Booklist praises it as a “powerful and emotional debut novel that deftly explores the complexities of identity, family, and belonging.”
A government major in Arts & Sciences, Bankhole is a Maryland native who grew up in both the U.S. and Nigeria.
“It is not an accident that album was originally, and remains, a word for a kind of book,” he writes in the volume, published by University of California Press.
Read the full story on the Cornellians website.