Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

Ifi and Job, a Nigerian couple in an arranged marriage, begin their lives together in Nebraska with an outrageous lie.

Ifi and Job, a Nigerian couple in an arranged marriage, begin their lives together in Nebraska with a single, outrageous lie: that Job is a doctor, not a college dropout. Unwittingly, Ifi becomes his co-conspirator—that is until his first wife, Cheryl, whom he married for a green card years ago, reenters the picture and upsets Job’s tenuous balancing act.

Publication date: May 12, 2015

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 9

Page count: 288 pages

ISBN: 9781566893978

Julie Iromuanya is the author of Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press), a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Etisalat Prize for Literature (now 9 Mobile Prize for Literature), and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Debut Fiction. Her scholarly-critical work most recently appears in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalismand is forthcoming in Callaloo: A Journal of African American Arts and Lettersand Afropolitan Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury Publishing). She was the inaugural Herbert W. Martin Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Dayton. She has also been a Jane Tinkham Broughton Fellow in Fiction at Bread Loaf Writers Conference, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference, a Bread Loaf Bakeless/Camargo France Fellow, a Brown Foundation Fellow at the Dora Maar House, a Jan Michalski Fellow at “The Treehouses,” and the Eternal Vada Fellow at Sangam House. Her work has also been supported by fellowships and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, Villa Lena, and Villa Ruffieux. 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 is an assistant professor in the creative writing MFA program at the University of Arizona. She is at work on a second novel, A Season of Light.

“In agile prose, Iromuanya creates an intricate and fresh portrait of the perennial immigrant’s tale.” 

—The San Francisco Chronicle

“Julie Iromuanya’s debut novel is both keenly observational and intensely introspective. She’s one to look out for.” 

—Bustle

“Heartbreakingly funny and terribly sad, a remarkable feat of storytelling, in which all the characters’ isolated longings and frustrations are intimately felt, yet register on the grand tragicomic scale of human folly.” 

—The Star Tribune

“Iromuanya . . . snaps readers to attention with the first paragraph of Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, announcing the arrival of a mature, distinctive and commanding voice.” 

—Paste

“Heartbreaking, occasionally wryly hilarious, and told in a spare, sensory style, this thoughtful debut novel ranks high in this year’s literary fiction.” 

—Masters Review

“Iromuanya tackles many subjects—marriage, race, immigration, families . . . the interplay between Job’s rigid and secretive bluster and Ifi’s attempt to build a new American life never loses its poignancy.” 

—The New York Times Sunday Book Review

“A splendid debut.” 

—Margot Livesey

“Julie Iromuanya’s vision burns away the superficial veneer of America’s promise to its newest inhabitants even as it tells a story that is classic, powerful and, in its own way, open to possibility.” 

—David Mura

“[Iromuanya reveals] the very human weaknesses that we all share—the unwillingness to admit failure, and the desire to see ourselves reflected well in the eyes of others.” 

—The Rumpus

“Iromuanya weaves this tale of a mismatched couple with dark humor and careful observation. . . Her insights into assimilation—its difficulties and pitfalls—are astute and at times, eye-opening.” 

—BookPage