[7] Despite his parents not being educated beyond primary school level, he credits the "wonderful conversations" he had with his "incredibly witty and funny" mother for his interest in writing: "She made me recognize the beauty, power, transfiguration, and transcendence that words attain in certain permutations.
[10] In 2018, Buoro received the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship[1] and commenced writing his first novel, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, on his BlackBerry phone.
[1] The judging panel, including Ian Rankin, praised Buoro for creating "a narrative of depth that also manages to be instantly engaging.
[14] The judges described it as "extraordinary, driven by a gloriously eccentric central character" and "utterly compelling, not shy about posing difficult questions for the reader."
[18] The Guardian named Buoro as one of their ten best new novelists for 2023, describing The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa as "an exhilarating, tragicomic novel that questions what it means to come of age in Nigeria today.
They offered a nuanced perspective on Buoro's writing style: "His sentences are mad, boisterous, incantatory—and, in a continent where rhythm is as common as praying, quite singular.