Oyinkan Braithwaite’s new novel Cursed Daughters to Atlantic

James Roxburgh, Publishing Director for Atlantic Fiction, has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excl. Canada and Nigeria) to Sunday Times-bestselling author Oyinkan Braithwaite’s second novel, Cursed Daughters, from Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander. Cursed Daughters will be published in hardback, trade paperback and eBook on 25^th September 2025. 

My Sister, the Serial Killer, by British-Nigerian novelist Oyinkan Braithwaite, was a publishing phenomenon that sold close to 500,000 copies in the UK, sold rights in 34 languages, was long-listed for the Booker, shortlisted for The Women’s Prize for Fiction and won the Crime and Thriller Book of the Year at the British Book Awards.

Cursed Daughters will form the cornerstone of Atlantic’s 25^th-anniversary celebrations and is the company’s biggest book of the year, accompanied by our most significant marketing campaign of the decade. The marketing will encompass the whole of the trade, with an exclusive edition for Waterstones and another for independent shops, with a huge multi-channel consumer advertising campaign to come on publication. A publicity tour comprising flagship, bespoke events will run throughout the Autumn.

No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace…

So goes the family curse, long handed down from generation to generation, ruining families and breaking hearts. And now it’s Eniiyi’s turn – who, due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt, Monife, is already used to her family’s strange beliefs, as well as their insistence that she is a reincarnation. Still, when she falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak, or can she escape the family curse and the mysterious fate that befell her aunt?

James Roxburgh says,

‘If I died tomorrow, my publishing obituary would probably read ‘tall man, acquired My Sister, the Serial Killer’, so I’ve long felt that I have a particular stake in Oyin’s follow-up. Fortunately, it is every bit as mordantly brilliant and original as its predecessor – technically sophisticated, funny and moving on female relationships, perceptive on love and heartbreak, sharp on the meeting point of modernity and an older cultural Nigeria. We think this is a huge step up from Oyin, and a huge publication for Atlantic Fiction. Obituarists, take note: ‘tall man, acquired Cursed Daughters’.

Oyinkan Braithwaite says,

‘And here we are once more with Cursed Daughters, a story of love, generational trauma and superstition. The book is written; but it is near impossible to know how the world will receive a work you have laboured over. Fortunately, I have a fairy agent mother in Clare Alexander, a tall wizard editor in James Roxburgh and an absolute gem of a team behind my successes thus far. So here’s to the continuation of a wonderful collaborative journey.’

Clare Alexander says,

‘My Sister, the Serial Killer arrived like a blast of fresh air into a muggy room. Truth to tell, although there were at least 4 books at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2024 that were compared to MSTSK, back in 2017 there were only a couple of UK publishers who wanted to publish it. And it was James Roxburgh and Atlantic Books who recognised it for what it was, and who published it so brilliantly. If I had a concern, it was how Oyin could conceivably follow such an outrageously distinctive and successful debut. But I needn’t have worried. Cursed Daughters has twinned love stories in a brilliant cocktail of modernity and superstition – with a dash of horror – that more than fulfils her early promise. And we couldn’t be happier that Oyin will be reunited with Atlantic Books and her extremely tall editor for publication of her new book.