Helen Oyeyemi is a British novelist. She was born in Nigeria and moved to London when she was four. She wrote her first novel, The Icarus Girl, while still at school studying for her A levels. After sending the first 20 pages to a publisher, she was offered two-book deal worth a rumoured £400,000. She studied Social and Political Sciences at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, graduating in 2006. Whilst at Cambridge, two of her plays, Juniper's Whitening and Victimese, were performed by fellow students to critical acclaim and subsequently published by Methuen. In 2007 Bloomsbury published her second novel, The Opposite House which is inspired by Cuban mythology. She lives in London but currently resides in New York.