COSTA BOOK AWARDS SHORTLIST 2011 Written in a truly beguiling voice, Christie Watson`s Tiny Sunbirds Far Away shows how some families can survive almost anything. Blessing & her brother Ezikiel adore their larger-than-life father, their glamorous mother & their comfortable life in Lagos. But all that changes when their father leaves them for another woman. Their mother is fired from her job at the Royal Imperial Hotel
- only married women can work there
- & soon they have to quit their air-conditioned apartment to go & live with their grandparents in a compound in the Niger Delta. Adapting to life with a poor countryside family is a shock beyond measure after their privileged upbringing in Lagos. At times hilarious, always poignant, occasionally tragic, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away is peopled with characters you will never forget.