Jacob Szymanski

Welcome to the show.

Now, I only gave a very brief description of Cursed Daughters, but it's so much more than that.

So in your own words, what's your new book about?

And there's this idea that the youngest person of the three main characters, Enni, is the reincarnation of Monife, which is the second youngest in the book.

Is reincarnation a common belief in Nigeria?

And if so, what does it mean?

What happens when someone is believed to be a reincarnation?

What's the implication?

or something you know or even maybe it might just be some people might just use it now to remember the person that is gone as opposed to a belief that the person has come back but um i think it's those kind of names as well that drew my attention to it okay just the etymology of it at this point um now reincarnation is just one of the ideas of this book but i'm curious like how the ideas around cursed daughters came to you initially

Interesting.

Can you tell us more about this, like the first iteration of this book that you ended up scrapping?

That's interesting.

Like, why did you scrap it?

Right, because there is a touch of fantasy in the label.

The book is...

occasionally depending on where you look labeled as fantasy in some places i think it feels more like um like contemporary literary fiction now you mentioned um any she's an interesting character because you have to feel for her situation because not only is her family cursed by to have all their relationships uh doomed specifically the women but

she's also the incarnation of money fair at least that's the belief but not just that she's also her and money fair visually look almost identical and so this idea of reincarnation is just like solidified in everybody's view and that must be ridiculously difficult especially when you consider the family dynamics which that was one of the most like stunning parts to this book is the place that parental figures have from every generation

What's the deal with that?

The parents are incredibly meddling and that aspect is mentioned multiple times.

What's the deal with all that parental meddling?