Pemi Aguda who grew up in Lagos, a graduate of the writer’s programme at the University of Michigan, details magic and mayhem in the Lagos metropolis riven by crime, corruption and poverty, influenced by supernatural influences.

In Ghostroots, unexplained powers which are both benign and malign, although their motivations are good but their impact is devastating, and in some cases act as messengers of divine retribution. The result of an environmental disarray, a place in which power cut are routine, masculinity is malevolent and pentecostal ministers hold sway with parables of salvation, as these ghosts, spirit jesters, unaccountable pestilences and eerie premonitions.

The Lagos ogf these twelve sinister and beguiling stories is multi-faceted, peopled by Pentecostal Christians and exasperated atheists, by tight-knit extended families and struggling single fathers, characters cursed by guilt, bound by the ties of ancestors and community or enchanted by the allure of mysticism and would-be prophets.  There are gossips, party girls and a schoolboy followed home by a group of tribal masquerades, cloaked in feathers and twinkling beads. Mother has warned him not to bring strangers home, but he is sure she will understand.

Exploring the dark borders between psychology and superstition these feverishly imaginative stories of trauma, betrayal, terror and love lay bare the forces of myth, tradition, gender, sexuality and modernity in Nigerian society. Powered by deep empathy, and glinting with humour and insight, they announce a major new literary talent.

In Manifest, the opening story, reveals the daily reality of life in Nigeria’s most populous city, as an unnamed young woman reads the headlines in the local newspapers:” Women Cuts Lover’s Penis off in Rage of Jealousy. Man Beats Daughter to Death for Skipping School, Community in Outskirt of Lagos Hack Thief to Pieces.”  For the women, home alone offers little security, as she herself begins to commit malicious acts, flooding a bathroom, killing a friend’s puppy – she fears that she is the reincarnation of her own wicked long dead grandmother.

In Breastmilk, a woman has conflicting emotions about giving birth to a baby boy. “My heart broke a little. A son who could grow to become a man, a man who might hurt other people no matter how well I raise him because  man is man, even when he is the best man.”

The mother’s inability to conjure milk from her breast is evidence of this barrier between the sexes and, in her mind, linked to her husband’s infidelity. That he feels guilt over the betrayal marks himont as the best of men.

In The Hollow, echoes of Stephen King resound in puzzle-box story of a building. Aria, an ambitious trainee architect with a brain “simmering with solutions”, surveys a house that makes no sense, the walls and roots do not add up to the sum of her blueprints. Walking through its rooms, “ a fear clunks up her ribs, puncturing her breaths, a fear that nothing is real and everything is upside down and elementally wrong,” The secret of its design lies in its inception as a haven from an abusive husband.

Lagos is stultifying ecosystem of short-term schemes, low-paid labour, women overwhelmed by the practicalities of child rearing and men with syrupy tongues. The rhythms of Nigerian Pidgin heard on the streets with its singsong blend of English and staccato interjections. A traumatised mother takes on an animal smell, while the toe of a destitute teenager is black on the inside.

The city, notes one weary resident, is bright and glittering from a distance, nothing but grim and seat up close. In several of the stories the paranormal offers a welcome glimpse of happier alternative. In one a ghost market appears at dusk, run by chattering women wrapped in vibrant indigo Ankara dresses, offering overflowing baskets of taste peppers and onions, bright orange carrots and deep green okras on their lantern-lit stalls.

Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda, Virgo £16:99, 224 pages.