Aoiri Obaigbo’s The Virgin Widow boldly synthesizes the realist, the magical, the spiritual and the historical through the story of a man who chases an attractive woman only to find himself lured into a mystery which has been gathering momentum for centuries. The beauty of family life is subtly interwoven with the corrosive and ultimately fatal effects of human evil, even as this evil is demonstrated as arising from aborted love reverberating across the centuries. The core of this novel is the story of Aziza, a mythic personality whom Obaigbo has transformed into a credible character, further transposing this mythic character made flesh in terms of a contemporary personality, his descendant of centuries, experiencing the repercussions of his ancestor’s life.