[1] Following his two collections of short stories – From Caves of Rotten Teeth (2005) and Love Is Power, or Something Like That (2013) – his first novel, Blackass, was published in 2015, described by the Chicago Review of Books as "Kafka with a wink".

Unlikely moments of empathy occur again and again amid wrenching drama and subtle comedy; the resulting collection satisfies on numerous levels.

Reviewing it in The Financial Times, Jon Day wrote: "From the first sentence, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis confronts you with the inherent strangeness of the pact you make when you read fiction.

[12] A Igoni Barrett’s first novel — his third book — demands a similar response....to read him only as a Nigerian writer would be to do him a disservice.

"[13] Writing in The Guardian, Helon Habila said: "Igoni Barrett's greatest asset is his ability to satirise the ridiculous extents people, especially Lagosians, go to in order to appear important.

"[14] Claire Fallon for the Huffington Post concluded: "Blackass is a blunt, transparently written novel — the kind that makes the reader feel as though they’re standing inside the skin of the character, going about his day with him — and though the topic could easily be that of a polemic, it’s also a subtle, circumspect novel about the intersecting, sometimes mutually exclusive needs humans have for family and connection, and for status and power.

[20] He was the founding organizer of the BookJam reading series[21] in Lagos, Nigeria, which featured the writers Jude Dibia, Michela Wrong, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Binyavanga Wainaina, Helon Habila and Tsitsi Dangarembga, among others.