Authenticity runs throughout the book, carrying total conviction

First rate action writing

Gripping... This is a memorable, richly allusive story, skillfully interweaving thoughts from Kafka to the poet Elizabeth Bishop. Barrett probes not only the surface but the depths of who we are

Wonderfully imagined, and very funny… a dazzling first novel by one of Africa’s best young writers

As well as being a fable about race and identity, Blackass is in large part a love letter to Lagos… For Barrett, race is inevitably one part of a person’s identity, but it is one that asserts itself principally through the eyes of others, through how they “read” those they encounter. People will inevitably discuss this book, and Barrett’s work in general, in the context of a resurgent Nigerian literary scene that includes writers such as Teju Cole, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Helon Habila. But, to read him only as a Nigerian writer would be to do him a disservice. For Blackass is a strange, compelling novel, and Barrett has something to tell us all.

A bold riff on Kafka’s Metamorphosis... Igoni Barrett’s greatest asset is his ability to satirise the ridiculous extents people, especially Lagosians, go to in order to appear important. His characters’ every foible is captured and amplified for effect.

An inventive and playful take on power and identity in modern Nigeria... [with] nods to Achebe and Yeats

A highly original story about selfishness, inequality and perceptions

A confident, original and occasionally laugh-out-loud-funny novel which may have an agenda but is certainly not hijacked by it

A suitably surreal cocktail of Kafka, Lagos life and Nigerian wit

A really interesting and different novel from many of the things I have read, or have seen published, this year. You can simply read it as a darkly witty escapist fairytale/myth/fable or you can or as a wonderful, satirical and occasionally daring way to look at society and questions of class, gender and race. Either way you are going to have a great read ahead of you

Barrett’s novel forces the reader to consider important questions regarding the human condition and is a worthwhile read precisely because of the difficult questions it raises.

Barrett reworks Kafka’s family drama as an urban odyssey and make a stunning success of it.