Four middle-class Nigerian brothers,Ikenna,,Boja, Obembe and Benjamin, decide to go fishing in a river. They do this without their mother's knowledge, carefully hiding away their fishing kit when they come home. Their career lasts six weeks before they are discovered by a neighbor, who tells their mother. One day at the river they meet the local oddball, Abulu,who has the power of prophecy, and who predicts that Ikenna, the eldest, will be killed by one of his brothers: by a "fisherman". It is from this simple, almost mythological conceit that Chigozie Obioma's debut novel grows, gaining complexity and power as it rises to its heartbreaking climax.