A Defiant New Nigerian Novel Exposes the Brutal Reality of Insecurity and the High Cost of Silence
Red Sun Nightmare by Paul Otu Winner Launches Under Pennacle Publishing
Abuja, Nigeria. 2025
At a time when Nigerians wake each morning to news of another missing family, another community ravaged, another institution failing at its most basic duty, Red Sun Nightmare arrives as both a mirror and a lamentation. It is a story you will feel in your bones, because it is our story.
Pennacle Publishing proudly announces the release of Red Sun Nightmare, a bold and emotionally charged novel by Nigerian storyteller and filmmaker Paul Otu Winner.
The novel begins with what should have been a joyous homecoming: Dayo, his wife Iyabo, and their twelve-year-old daughter Janelle returning from Atlanta to reconnect with their roots. But on the Lagos–Ibadan expressway, their journey is violently interrupted by a group of armed Fulani militants, a scene disturbingly familiar to many Nigerians today. What follows is a harrowing ordeal of captivity, violation, systemic failure, and the unraveling of a country where ordinary citizens now live with extraordinary fear.
Through its pages, Red Sun Nightmare confronts the very questions Nigerians whisper about in private:
- How did we get here?
- When did the nation’s cracks become chasms?
- And how long can a country survive when trust in its institutions has dried up like rainless harmattan dust?
Addressing the Nation’s Deepest Wounds
With unflinching honesty, Paul Otu Winner draws from the lived realities of countless Nigerians; the parents who still wait for children who never came home, the villages abandoned overnight, the silent graves no one reports because the system can no longer hold their stories.
The novel’s force lies in its storytelling and in its courage, pushing the reader to confront:
Insecurity that now defines everyday life, from highways to farmlands to city centers
Political instability and leadership complacency, where the powerful remain insulated while citizens remain exposed
Ethno-religious fractures widened by propaganda and historical wounds, weaponized again and again
A police system many fear more than trust, crippled by corruption, lack of resources, and lost public confidence
The long historical roots of today’s crisis, stretching as far back as colonial interventions and the 1804 jihad, to military regimes, to democratic failures
“This book is fiction,” the publisher says, “but every Nigerian knows it is the kind of fiction built from truth.”
A Story Rooted in Reality, and Written for Every Nigerian Heart
Red Sun Nightmare is a quiet plea.
- A plea to remember what life in this country used to be.
- A plea to confront what it has slowly become.
- A plea to imagine what it could still be should we decide that silence will no longer be our contribution.
The emotional weight of Dayo and Iyabo’s struggle; the fear, the powerlessness, the longing for justice in a system that can no longer deliver it, reflects a collective national grief many are still carrying alone.
It is, above all, a story about the cost of being human in a nation that sometimes forgets its humanity.
About the Author
Paul Otu Winner was born in Sapele, with ancestral ties to Kokori Inland in Delta State, Nigeria. A storyteller and filmmaker with nearly a decade of experience, his body of work reflects a deep concern for the political, social, and spiritual conditions shaping African lives today.
Paul blends research with compassion, creating stories that speak to both memory and consequence. Red Sun Nightmare is his most urgent statement yet, a fictional work rooted in real horrors, written with the hope of stirring thought, empathy, and, ultimately, change.
He is also the author of Walking in Divine Power and Good Morning, Lagos.
Connect with him on Instagram via @upward_focus1 and @paul_out_winner, or on Facebook at Upward Focus and Paul Otu Winner.
Availability
Red Sun Nightmare is available through Pennacle Publishing, and across major bookstores and online platforms worldwide.
Media Contact:
Pennacle Publishing
Email: Hello@thepennacle.com
Website: www.thepennacle.com
WhatsApp: +234 915 605 8534
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