In a novel of stunning scope, Chuma Nwokolo moves across time and place to deliver a story that speaks to urgent contemporary concerns. His characters' indelible voices offer perspectives that are simultaneously global, political, and intimately human.

The place at The Extinction of Menai's heart is the Niger delta village of Kreektown, even as the action spans continents. The cause of the trouble is an unethical drug trial administered to Kreektown residents--the fictional Menai people--in the early 1980s. And the unfolding tragedy is the looming end, decades later, of the...