A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya — full book breakdown including genre, page count, audiobook length and narrator, publisher’s synopsis, content notes, author bio, and additional reader notes. Includes direct links to Goodreads, The Storygraph, and featured book lists. Everything you need to know before you read.
A Season of Light
Julie Iromuanya
Overview: A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya
A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya is a standout read featured on Slay the Page. Explore the genre, page count, audiobook length and narrator, synopsis, content notes, publisher details, and author background before you dive in. Selected as both a Book of the Month main pick and audiobook pick for February 2025, this powerful novel is not to be missed.
Book Details: A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya
Genre: Literary Fiction
Page Count: 256 Pages (Hardcover)
Audiobook Length: 8 Hours, 39 Minutes
Narrator: Yinka Ladeinde, Leo Anifowose
Publisher: Algonquin Books (Hachette Book Group)
Publication Date: February 4, 2025
Selected By: Book of the Month – Main + Audiobook Pick (February 2025)
Get More Info: Goodreads | The Storygraph
Publisher’s Description of A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya
For fans of Behold the Dreamers, comes a compelling novel – A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya – applauded by the New York Times Book Review as “luminous. . . Iromuanya is a spectacular storyteller” – about a tightly bound Nigerian family living in Florida and the wounds that get passed down from generation to generation, from the author of the acclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Doctor.
When 276 schoolgirls are abducted from their school in Nigeria, Fidelis Ewerike, a Florida-based barrister, poet, and former POW of the Nigerian Civil War, begins to go mad, consumed by memories of his younger sister Ugochi, who went missing during that conflict. Consumed by survivor’s guilt and fearful that the same fate awaits Amara, his sixteen-year-old daughter who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ugochi, Fidelis locks her in her bedroom, offering no words of explanation, only lovingly—if poorly—made meals and sweets.
Amid that singular action, the Ewerike family spirals into chaos: After unsuccessful attempts to free her daughter from her room, his wife Adaobi seeks the counsel of a preacher, praying for spiritual liberation from the curse she is certain has plagued her family since leaving Nigeria.
Fourteen-year-old Chuk, beset by his own war with the neighborhood boys, receives a painful education on force, masculinity, and his tenuous position within his family. And rebellious, resentful Amara is hungry for her life to be hers, so the moment she is able to escape her imprisonment, she falls in love—not with the Aba-born engineer-in-training her mother envisages, but with Maksym Kostyk, the son of the town drunk. Before long, the two have concocted a plan to run away from the trappings of their familial traumas.
Perfect for readers of Sing, Unburied, Sing, A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya is an all-consuming masterpiece. To peer into the window of the Ewerike family’s lives is a gift.
A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya is published by Algonquin Books (Hachette Book Group).
Content Notes: A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya
A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya includes sensitive content flagged by Book of the Month, including scenes depicting child abuse, domestic abuse, and mentions of sexual assault. View reader-submitted content notes on The StoryGraph for more details.
Who A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya Is Perfect For
A Season of Light is for readers who gravitate toward literary fiction that explores identity, ambition, and the weight of familial expectation. If you’re drawn to character-driven narratives, richly observed cultural nuance, and stories that peel back layers of belonging and self-worth, this one’s a must. Think Americanah, The Vanishing Half, or anything that walks the line between the personal and the political.
About the Author: Julie Iromuanya
Julie Iromuanya is a writer, scholar, and educator. Born and raised in the American Midwest, she is the daughter of Igbo Nigerian immigrants. Her creative writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Passages North, the Cream City Review, and the Tampa Review, among other journals. Her scholarly-critical work most recently appears in Converging Identities: Blackness in the Modern Diaspora (Carolina Academic Press).
She has been shortlisted for several prizes, including the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest, the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction and Family Matters contests, the Rona Jaffe Foundation fellowship, and the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship.
Iromuanya earned her B.A. at the University of Central Florida, and her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she was a Presidential Fellow and award-winning teacher.
She was the inaugural Herbert W. Martin Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Dayton. She has also been a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
Iromuanya is Assistant Professor of English and African and African American Studies and will be joining the faculty at the University of Arizona in the fall.
Mr. and Mrs. Doctor is her first novel (Goodreads, 2025).
Learn more about Julie Iromuanya’s books, biography, and latest releases on her official website.
Book Lists Featuring A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya
A Season of Light by Julie Iromuanya is featured in the following posts:
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