When Oyinkan Braithwaite burst onto the international literary scene with My Sister, the Serial Killer, she proved that family pathology and pitch-black comedy could make for intoxicating fiction. In her eagerly awaited novel, Cursed Daughters, Braithwaite returns to Lagos with an even sharper scalpel, trading the crime-thriller pulse for a haunting, vibrant examination of ancestral baggage, female agency, and the myths families construct to survive their own pain.
At the center of this multi-generational drama is the Falodun family, whose women share a conviction as unshakeable as biology: they are doomed in love, cursed by an ancestral betrayal to suffer perpetually at the hands and whims of men. When young Eniiyi returns home, she discovers she is not merely inheriting familial lore—her elders believe she is the literal reincarnation (àtúnwá) of her tragic, long-dead aunt Monife. Trapped between superstition and modernity, Eniiyi must confront a terrifying question: Is her fate already written, or can a woman rewrite the rules of her own bloodline?
Braithwaite’s prose remains lean, stylish, and remarkably effortless. She weaves Yoruba cosmology, dark humor, and generational trauma into a tapestry that feels simultaneously ancient and unmistakably modern. What makes Cursed Daughters a triumph is its refusal to simplify the complexity of inherited grief; Braithwaite understands that a curse is often just trauma passed down through the generations until someone is brave enough to name it.
The Verdict: Seductive, slyly comic, and emotionally devastating, Cursed Daughters cements Oyinkan Braithwaite as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary fiction. A compulsively readable masterclass in storytelling that lingers long after the final page.
