Ukamaka Olisakwe

Read this book!
This was a powerful book, at times quite a difficult read, It is sure to infuriate anyone who supports women's rights, as it highlights the injustices against Nigerian women in the 1980s.
I was listening to an audiobook version, read by one of my favourite narrators, Adjoa Andoh. I just love the varied accents she uses for Nigerian speech, yet she can divert easily to an English accent for the narration.

Ogadinma is just seventeen when we meet her. She is a young Nigerian woman, living with her father, after her mother left them when she was small. Her one dream is to gain admittance to a university. To do this she needs the help of someone with contacts to support her university admission. Her father is advised that Barrister Chima could help, so Ogadinma goes to visit him in his office. This is her first bad move and leads to a sequence of events that spirals downwards from then on. I don't want to spoil the story for others, I actually feel that the book's introduction already tells too much.

What hit me most about this book was that women weren't just targeted when out on the street, unprotected by friends or relatives, but that often, the perpetrators were just as likely to be people in a position of trust. Yet, once violated, it becomes a disgrace for a woman to even mention it, so the men are never judged for their actions.
In the book there is a sense of things changing, of women just starting to get the beginnings of some freedom. Now, 40 years down the line, I wonder how much has changed.

Highly recommended and a good read for book clubs.… (altro)