***REGION 6: Western Africa

If you have not read the information on the master thread regarding the intent of these regional threads, please do this first.

***6. Western Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Saint Helena, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo

Oil on Water by Helon Habila (2010, Nigerian)

Oil on Water is a mesmerizing story of two journalists who make a perilous trek into the forest in pursuit of "the story" - in this case, to interview the kidnappers of a white woman, a wife of a local oil executive. Rufus is a young journalist hoping to prove himself to his editor and co-workers, and Zaq is a veteran journalist, perhaps the most well-known in Nigeria, and clearly an alcoholic. They travel with a group of journalists for the interview but discover that the parties involved are not where they said they would be and that the island has seen some fighting. All of the journalist return at this point, except for Rufus and Zaq who continue on still in pursuit of "the story" and "the truth."

The two hire a man and his young son to take them by boat deeper into the jungle in pursuit of the kidnappers. The trip is perilous and, for the reader, riveting. Along the way we learn about Zaq and about Rufus, about the profound and devastating effects of the oil industry on Nigeria's land and people. Turns out "the story" is many stories, and "the truth" is something much bigger than Rufus imagined.

I was amazed that so much was told in such few pages. There is a lot going on and that, in addition to some flashbacks, does occasionally cause some confusion (where are we?), but I thought it a minor flaw. Habila's characters are wonderfully drawn, his prose carefully and beautifully crafted; he brings Nigeria vividly to life. The oil industry looms large in Nigeria and it's devastating is made all the more powerful coming on the heels of the Gulf oil disaster. The corruption and greed makes knowing who the "bad" and the "good" guys are. And in all this, a great affection for the land and its people comes through.

A short book, a great read. I enjoyed his previous boo, Measuring Time also.

Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster (Gambia)

Opening Sentence: “…Getting dressed was always the hardest part of the afternoon…”

This is the debut novel of Dayo Forster, an African writer who was born and lived The Gambia, but now lives in Kenya. The plot revolves around Adodele, a Gambian girl on the cusp of womanhood. I picked READING THE CEILING as my family lived in that country for a few years back in the late 70’s.

The opening sentence didn’t really grab me, but a paragraph later the author mentions the harmattan blowing off the Sahara – and it evoked many memories. The harmattan is a dry, dusty trade wind that starts to blow around November. It is a time of sand storms – but is also a dry heat, so brings relief from the high humidity.

The book opens with Adodele lying in bed on the day of her 18th birthday. She is planning on losing her virginity that night to get it over and done with before she flies off to university. A list of possible partners is presented to the reader, along with the pros and cons, of who she could “do the deed’ with.

What the book does next is very unusual, and a very good idea – Dayo Forster presents us with three alternative versions of how Adodele’s life might turn out depending on who she slept with that fateful night. Each of the three life journeys, from teenage to middle age, are very different, yet there is a linked similarity in the background stories of her friends and family in each version of Adodele’s life.

The story demonstrates how decisions made in immaturity can have far reaching consequences throughout life. Yes no-one has foresight so we just have to make do with how life turns out. Adodele has the additional problem of struggling to fit a modern way of living into traditional culture – balancing the best of both worlds into her life.

For anyone who has lived in West Africa – and especially The Gambia – this book will bring back memories of food, clothes and smells. The Author uses local vocabulary, but it is easy to work out what the meaning is from the context. The words used definately evoked a sense of place for me.

Between Sisters by Adwoa Badoe is probably a little different from other books that will be on this page because my library at least has it marked 'teen'. The protagonist, Gloria, a teenage girl living in Ghana who fails almost all her exams and is sent to live with a distant relative, Christine, who is a doctor and needs someone to help out around the house and care for her young son. Gloria has been living in a small town, and when she moves in with Christine she's suddenly exposed to a big city, and her new best friend, Bea, is not a very good influence. Although I sometimes wished Gloria would make better decisions, she is a very believable 16-year-old. I also thought that the book did a good job of walking the line between showing how AIDS was a big issue and constant specter, but without making it into the whole story - it was just another part of Gloria's coming-of-age.

Although I thought the book really was quite good, and would recommend it, there were some things that I either wanted the book to go into more, or wasn't sure how to feel about. For instance, Gloria is in an inherently exploitative situation - she works for Christine almost constantly, but is never paid. The best she gets is a promise that Christine will do something for her in the future. Although there's a decent amount of allusion to the problems of the situation, and even what I might consider vague foreshadowing, I felt like it was never quite delivered on.

Still, I thought the book was really very good, especially considering that there are so few books set in Ghana aimed at teens.

I'm reading Water Music by T.C. Boyle which tells about the journeys of Scottish explorer Mungo Park through West Africa in the early 19th century. It is not historical fiction in a narrow sense, as fact and fiction are generously mingled, and maybe not very respectful towards Africans and Europeans alike, but it's great fun to read.

Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone, Read 2009)

Ancestor Stones is a sensually and beautifully written character-driven story about five women from two generations whose lives have remained tied to West Africa, even though three of them have traveled far from home. Aminatta Forna does an excellent job of giving individual voices to each of these women.

Abie returns from England to West Africa with her young family to the coffee estate begun by her grandfather, a polygamist Muslim, who had 11 wives and more than 36 children. She is greeted by four of her Aunts, Asana, Maryiama, Hawa, and Serah, each a daughter of the grandfather by a different mother. Ancestor Stones is essentially a story of West African post-colonial problems told through the lives of the four Aunties.

Asana says of herself “You never knew my name was Yankay, the firstborn. That I was once a twin. That I had a brother Alusani, the other half of my soul. Or that I grew jealous of him and longed for my mother to look at me, without knowing what it was I wished for. And how I watched a man with skin like the shadows of the moon collecting the souls of lost children in the forest.” Abie says of her “Asana, daughter of Ya Namina, my grandfather’s senior wife: a magnificent hauteur flowed like river water from the mother’s veins through the daughter’s.”

Maryiama of whom Abie says “Gentle Mary, from whom foolish children ran in fright but who braided my hair, cared for me like I was her own and talked of the sea and stars.” Mary says “I returned home the way I departed. I stood on the deck watching the coastline widen in front of me, felt the sea breeze, the molecules of air, salt and water attaching themselves to my skin. Even the whiff of fish and oil at the dock was like a perfume. And the people! The pride in them as they looked and never looked away. For the first time in a long while I saw myself again, reflected in their eyes.”

Hawa who says “This is what I think about luck. Luck is like adjoining pools of water, each flowing into the other. One pool might be dry, the next pool overflowing. It’s the same with luck. Some people have everything. Other people have nothing. The people who have plenty just seem to get it all, all the luck that ought by rights to belong to someone else. That’s the way it was with me. Always the luck just seems to drain out of my pool and into somebody else’s.” Abie says of Hawa “Hawa, whose face wore the same expression I remembered from my childhood — of disappointment already foretold. Not even a smile to greet me.”

Serah says “And the first thing I feel is guilty. Guilty. A mental checklist of offences committed and undetected. As though the appearance of dozens of people in the dead of night might be something we have brought upon ourselves. For practising swear words when we were alone. For holding spitting competition. For someone’s doves we accidentally set free; they flew up to the branches of an orange free and broadcast there freedom with thunderous coos. We didn’t try to catch them. We ran away.” Abie says of Serah “Serah, belly sister of my father, who spoke to me in a way no other adult ever had — as though I might one day become her equal.”

This is a book which stayed with me during the day when I was away from it. It made me want to read it faster to find out how each was fairing as time went on and the country became more unstable.

SIERRA LEONE

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

This enchanting novel is set in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, at the end of the country's civil war that lasted from 1991-2002. Adrian Lockheart, a British psychologist who has left his family to pursue a more personally fulfilling career, is at the bedside of Elias Cole, a former university professor and dean who is nearing the end of his life. Adrian encourages Elias to share his story with him on weekly therapeutic visits , and Cole tells him about his career, including his friendship with Julius Kamara, another university professor, and his young wife Saffia, who Julius sees for the first time at a faculty gathering just before the successful Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. He is immediately entranced by her, and spends much of his spare time thinking of ways to get closer to her.

The story of Elias and Saffia is interwined with Adrian's experiences in post-war Sierra Leone, along with his friendship with Kai, a talented young surgeon who has used Adrian's living quarters as a place to crash prior to the psychologist's arrival. The men become close friends, although Kai is clearly scarred by his experiences during the recent civil war, which he is unable to share with his friend.

Adrian's primary interest is in diagnosing and treating victims of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and he cares for several hospitalized patients who appear to suffer from this problem due to the civil war. He attempts to get several of them to talk about their experiences, but few of these poor souls are willing or able to share their stories or accede to his treatment plans. His colleagues and Kai are respectful of his work, but they tell him that his methods have little chance to make any impact on the lives of his patients, due to the country's lack of resources and the different cultural beliefs about mental health.

Elias is the only person who will talk freely about the past with Adrian, and through the life of the dying man and his relationships with Julius and Saffia he learns about the country's postcolonial history, including the devastating civil war that destroyed the fabric of the country and the will of thousands of Sierra Leoneans.

Adrian falls in love with a local woman, whose ties to the other major characters provide a tension to and deeper understanding of their stories. As their relationship deepens, Adrian is forced to decide whether to stay in Sierra Leone, where he is loved and believes he has much to offer, while Kai agonizes over his long held desire to move to the United States where he can practice medicine and exorcise the internal demons that plague his dreams and affect his work.

The Memory of Love is a stunning and deeply moving novel about love in its different forms, and how it can affect and be affected by greed, selfishness, personal ambition and war. The narrative is superb, and I found myself emotionally tied to the lives of the characters as much as any other book I've read in the past decade.

Buchi Emecheta : The Joys of Motherhood
4/5 stars
Nigeria

Despite my cheerful surroundings (sunny day on the veranda of a coffee shop overlooking the lake), I wasn't reading the most cheerful of books. This book, despite its title, has the joy sucked right out of it. It was actually a little hard to read on a nice summer day; I was much ready to read something else. It discusses the hardship of Nnu Ego, a Nigerian woman, and her struggles to be a traditional Nigerian wife, mother, and daughter against a Nigeria striving to modernize itself. Everyone struggle a woman could go through is in this book; marrying a man she doesn't love, the loss of a child, the burden of a family and extreme poverty just to name a few.

It's a good book in that it aptly portrays Nigerian society at the time with its (continuing) struggles of tradition vs modernity, villages vs big towns, white vs blacks, rich vs poor, women vs men. There is a lot of back and forth as Nnu Ego can't stop contemplating what a better life for a woman could be like but yet continues to uphold her more oppressive traditions as her sense of duty to her children and the men in her life are the only thing she feels is of worth in her life.

An interesting tale with lots to learn.

Official review will be in the next issue for Belletrista.

Although I am very familiar with Nigerian history and culture this is the first book I read from the country and this is only the second country in Africa where I have read a book, the other country being Egypt.

>kidzdoc - thanks for this review, I was vascillating over whether to read The Memory of Love but given your comments and the fact that it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize makes me think I couldn't possibly go wrong!

Nigeria:
Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
First published 1964



Arrow of God takes place around 1920 in the Igbo region of Nigeria. The principal character, Ezeulu, is the chief priest of the principal god of a community of six villages. He is a powerful, just, and prosperous man whose leadership is well-established. But no community is without its conflicts, and no important man is without his enemies.

Ezeulu faces the added challenge, however, of dealing with an increasingly intrusive British presence. Having suppressed all armed resistance, and having gotten through the First World War, the British are eager to get on with their self-appointed role as civilizers and missionaries. In ways they can't begin to predict or understand, their demands on Ezeulu and his village precipitate catastrophic changes that threaten the very individuals the English think they are helping.

The contrast in world views between the Igbo and the English is superbly portrayed in how Ezeulu and Captain Winterbottom, his British counterpart, see their surroundings. To the English, Africa is a land of oppressive heat, invasive insects, and dangerous diseases. It is a place to be conquered, put in order, tolerated (with the help of copious amounts of gin), and made the stepping-stone to a comfortable retirement back in England. To the native, however, it is a complex web of spiritual forces, folklore, social customs, and natural elements that must be appeased through sacrifice and ritual, not overcome.

Arrow of God is an illuminating portrait of Igbo culture, showing the internal logic and respectfulness behind practices and values that mystified the outsider. The novel is not a diatribe against the English, being even somewhat sympathetic with their frustration at trying to interact with people whose motives are completely alien. It is, instead, a testament to the inevitable suffering that occurs when the values and traditions of one society are imposed on another.

GraceLand by Chris Abani is set in modern-day Nigeria, follows the story of sixteen-year-old Elvis. There are flashbacks to his childhood, growing up in the village - and while life in the village is not exactly easier than in the city, Elvis is shocked by the corruption, brutality and violence that he sees when he starts trying to find work. I enjoyed reading this but it felt like it was a bit didactic - Elvis is the innocent outsider whose eyes the reader sees through, as we are taken through a litany of everything that is wrong with the modern state of Nigeria.

Incidentally, Elvis loves to read (his mother was a schoolteacher) and there is a section where he browses books in a market, which lists a number of West African novels which might be worth following up: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Mongo Beti's The Poor Christ Of Bomba, Elechi Amadi's The Concubine, Camara Laye's The Radiance Of The King, and Mariama Ba's So Long A Letter.

SENEGAL (and ITALY)

I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan by Pap Khouma
Originally published in Italian, 1990. English translation 2010

This autobiographical novel takes the reader on a journey with the narrator from his home in Senegal, where he studied pottery, despite this being considered inappropriate for someone with his traditional family background, but then followed some cousins to the Ivory Coast, where he first started selling trinkets to tourists, and finally to Italy, en route, he thought, to Germany where a Senagalese fortune teller told him he should go. Through Khouma's first person tale, the reader experiences the hectic pace of the illegal immigrant's life. Even when he is not traveling to Paris, trying and failing to get into Germany, having difficulty getting back into Italy, returning briefly to Senegal, and then coming back to Italy, he is on the go: trying to buy the elephant sculptures, jewelry, shirts, and other objects; traveling to beaches and cafés and metro stations to sell them; searching for places to live that are cheap and safe; moving from town to town to find customers and escape the police. It is a hard, difficult, dangerous life, especially because Khouma and his narrator were among the first Senegalese to travel to Italy (the novel takes place in the mid-1980s and was published in 1990). Khouma also gives the reader a real sense of the brotherhood among the Senegalese immigrants, how they will mostly try to help each other even if they didn't know each other back home, although everyone is more or less equally poor and struggling. Their friendships and support of each other are largely what keep them all going. Towards the end of the novel, the Italian government gives the Senegalese immigrants papers that allow them to be documented immigrants and legally stay in Italy, but then the police oppression picks up.

I enjoyed this book for its vivid depiction of the life of these immigrants and the ways they try to stay beneath the radar of the authorities, including arriving places separately, traveling in different cars on trains, and more. I also appreciated the way it illustrates the mixed relationships between the Senegalese and the Italians, the tourists who want to buy the items the vendors are selling while the police not only try to stop them from selling (confiscating their merchandise, threatening them with jail or deportation), but also suspect them all of selling drugs; the terrible lack of treatment the narrator receives when he is very ill and goes to a hospital versus the kindness of some Italian café owners and others. Above all, the reader gets a real sense of what it is like to be very hard-working but very poor and very black and very undocumented.

In the introductory notes to the translation I read, both the translator and a Dartmouth Italian professor point out that Khouma was not only one of the first Senegalese to come to Italy but one of the first to write about the experience of African immigrants there. When he wrote the book, which was published in Italy in 1990, he had the help of an Italian journalist in shaping the stories, but he has since gone on to write other books without that kind of editorial assistance. They also point out that he was a trailblazer: other immigrants have followed in his footsteps and written perhaps more complex and novelistic works. Nonetheless, this was a compelling read.

Benin: De bruid van Benin (The Bride of Benin) by Annette Bokpê


I must admit I was a bit reluctant to read this book and I only started it because it was the only book about Benin I could locate. However, "forced reads" like this often hold very pleasant surprises, so after half a page, I was totally wrapped up in this autobiography and in the engaging style of Annette who married the modest, hard-working engineer Maurice she met in Germany who later became a prince in his own country Benin. Annette soon finds out that Benin is a country ruled by voodoo-rituals and although her husband tries to escape the traditions, he finally goes back to his roots.
I thought this was a magnificent book. Bokpê writes beautifully and vividly. She warmly embraces the Benin-culture and her new Benin-family and friends and undergoes events with a lot of open-mindedness. However, she manages to keep her identity and self-esteem, which cannot have been very easy in a culture that's so different from hers.
I must say, quite unexpectedly, I've learned a lot about Benin. The book's originally written in German and translated to Dutch. Highly recommended, but I don't think it's available in English.

Senegal Originally published 1960, translation 1962.

God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène

This book grew on me as I read it: at first it seemed like a relatively straightforward account, with political overtones, of a strike on the Dakar-Niger railway in 1947-1948, in which the African workers demanded higher wages, pensions, and more from the colonial French managers, but gradually I was drawn in by the perceptive portraits of a whole variety of characters and the more subtle interactions among them and by the portrait of changes in the society as the impact of western "civilization" made itself felt on traditional ways of life. As other reviewers have noted, one of the most interesting aspects of the book is the way the women take on new power as the story develops. Ousmane portrays not only the suffering caused by the strike, but also the suffering that made the strike necessary, and the strengths and weaknesses of the men and women who must deal with the consequences of the strike. He also illustrates the complex relationship between the colonizers and the colonized, some of whom take pride in having learned French, and how to read and write, while resenting the fact that they must speak French to the French, who have never taken the time to learn the African languages spoken by the people they control. Although the French characters are not as fully developed as the African ones, they too differ from each other and narrowly escape being stereotypes.

Ousmane immigrated to France where he became a union organizer and a member of the Communist party. At times in this book the political message borders on the obvious, but for the most part this is a story of people struggling to put food and water on the table and live in dignity.

NIGERIA (and Belgium)

On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe (2007, T from the Dutch 2009, Belgium/Nigeria)

On Black Sisters' Street introduces us to Sisi, Efe, Ama and Joyce, four African women working as prostitutes Antwerp, Belgium. Alternating between the present, when the women are emotionally brought together by a traumatic event, and their individual pasts, this story is a searing one of dreams and desperations, hopes and tragedies. As Rachbxl says in her stellar reviewof the book, written for Belletrista last year: "...I would have assumed that I myself have nothing in common with a Nigerian prostitute; I can't say that any more because this book has challenged me to question the way I see things." I can't agree more.

The book is written in an easy prose style, sometimes using a vernacular—a Nigerian English—in dialog, which some may find challenging, but it's infrequent and lends authenticity to the story. There is a fairly clear picture of what the women's lives as prostitutes are like and how they navigate and survive such a life. The back stories of the women provide both a general sense of what life is really like for many in Nigeria, and, more specifically, these women. This is a sad and tragic story, certainly a riveting one. But beyond that one cannot help but admire these strong women who struggle to be the heroes of their own lives.

*Though the back stories are set in Africa, the contemporary tale is set in Belgium - perhaps prostitution is a side of any country we'd rather not look at, but here it is.

Chika Unigwe won the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2012 (http://pmnewsnigeria.com/2012/11/01/chika-unigwe-wins-nigeria-prize-for-literature/) for her book On Black Sisters' Street.

>16 Trifolia: Excellent! I finished her Night Dancer recently, but have not written on it yet. Her books are a welcome addition to growing fiction coming out of Nigeria (by way of Europe or the US). I'd place her squarely in the company of Adichie, Habila, Okri, Oyeymi and Atta.

SENEGAL

Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane
Originally published 1962; English translation 1963; my edition 2012.
Cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads.



In this brief but powerful book, Samba Diallo, the son of an important leader of the Diallobé in Senegal, goes first to a local Islamic school, where he studies with a man known as the Teacher of the Diallobé, then to the school set up by the French colonial administration, and finally on to college in Paris. While the novella focuses on Samba (whose schooling, apparently, was a lot like that of the author), it is really a philosophical novel, consisting of multiple conversations about Islamic beliefs versus those of the west. Through these conversations, the Islamic beliefs are presented as a beautiful way of living in the world, of interacting with other people, and of approaching death, while western philosophies and actions are divorced from meaning and from faith, materialistic, and atheistic. Although this could appear didactic or oversimplified, in the context of the novel the conversations appear completely realistic and thoughtful. In essence, the novella confronts the European conquest of Africa with ideas as well as bullets, leading Africans to become estranged from their own history and cultures.

Although this is fundamentally a philosophical novel (how French, one might say), the author has created memorable characters and situations, both in Africa and in France, and a portrait of a time when African leaders had a real choice to make about how to deal with the west. Of course, that choice still continues, and not only in Africa.

The Beautyful Ones are not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Arnah (Ghana)

This has been on my tbr for a very long time, being cited as a classic of post-colonial African literature. It is a strangely beautiful book, despite the ugliness of its story.

The narrative follows an unnamed man as he refuses to accept a bribe at work. The reader is given the impression that bribery is a way of life, and the man is laughed at and berated by his friends and family for dooming himself to poverty because of his 'perverse' morality. The man has two principle friends: Koomson, a schoolfriend turned corrupt politician, and The Teacher, a previous source of spiritual guidance who has grown tired of his own disappointment. These two provide the foils for the man as he wrestles with his own decisions in life and his hopes for the future of Ghana. The book finishes with the country in the midst of a military coup, which threatens to turn the old moralities on their heads.

Although the book is only short, there is a slow wistfulness about it, with short bursts of narrative interspersed with long, thoughtful chapters examining the man's thoughts and their place in contemporary (1960s) Ghanaian society. The simple act of being offered a bribe is enough plot to drive the book for almost its entire length, until the build up to the coup. It is a very thoughtful meditation on the foundations of Ayi Kwei Armah's home country, and rightly deserves it reputation as a classic of African literature.

SENEGAL
Xala by Sembène Ousmane
Originally published 1974; English translation 1976.



In this bleak satire of post-colonial Senegal, the protagonist, El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a leading "businessman" (the quotes are Ousmane's) discovers that he is impotent, or xala, on the night of his wedding to his third wife, the beautiful and young N'Gone. Earlier that day, the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry had installed its very first African president, of which all its members, including El Hadji (a title which signifies he has made a pilgrimage to Mecca), are very proud. El Hadji is a sort of middleman, who buys goods in bulk and then resells them to other businesses, and he has become very rich over the years; he also spends liberally, on cars, chauffeurs, villas for each of his wives, and money for their children.

Needless to say, wives number one and two are not very happy about wife number three (although for different reasons), and so of course they are initially suspected putting on curse on El Hadji to cause his xala. He is distraught about it, naturally, and runs around to various Muslim and African wise men and healers, to no avail. In the meantime, his wives are unhappy, the whole town knows about his problem, and his business, through lack of attention and extravagant spending, is being run into the ground. Eventually a special healer resolves his problem but warns El Hadji that what he has taken away he can give back. The ending seems a little tacked on, but makes the political point of the novel.

I have previously read God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane, which depicted a railway strike in colonial Senegal and the way it empowered the women of the community. In this book, he illustrates the world of post-colonial Senegal, the way some people tried to emulate the French colonists, the corruption, the difficulties of polygamy, the way Islam and traditional religions interact, the interest of some in the younger generation of speaking in Wolof and not in French, and more, while using El Hadji's impotence to stand for the impotence of the Africans in the colonial and post-colonial world and, perhaps, the impotence of men confronted by stronger women. As in the earlier book, Ousmane creates interesting characters.

I was not as impressed by this novella as I was by God's Bits of Wood, but it is a dark take on post-colonial Africa.

NIGERIA

Oil on Water by Helon Habila
Cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads.



Part adventure story, part an exploration of environmental and political activism and violence, this is at heart a tale of the devastation -- environmental, cultural, and personal -- wrought by the Nigerian oil industry and its inherent colonialism even in a post-colonial era. I became interested in reading this novel by a Nigerian writer (who lives and teaches in the US) after reading 419 by a Canadian author.

The strength of this book is its portrait of the Niger River delta: the intricate and confusing network of waterways, fouled by oil, and the dead fish floating in the; the abandoned villages and those destroyed by the war between the military and the militants who challenge the oil companies' control of the area; the destruction of the river-based culture and economy' the histories of some of the people who live in the delta; and, always, the flares from the oil wells, flickering everywhere. I was also impressed by the way Habila interweaves the past and the present of the story line, so the reader learns the history of the characters and how they got to be where they are in way that loops back and forth, occasionally confusingly, in time.

That said, there were aspects of the book that grated on me. The narrator, Rufus, is a young journalist, sent originally as part of a small group of journalist who volunteered to meet the militants who had kidnapped the wife of a British oil company engineer to verify that she is indeed still alive and eager to be returned once the ransom is paid. As the novel progresses, Rufus and his idol Zaq, formerly the most famous journalist in Nigeria and now an alcoholic and ill has-been, venture deeper into the delta in search not only of the British woman and the "Professor," a leader of the militants, but also of the story and the deeper "meaning" of the story. Although complications ensue, this allows Habila, a former journalist himself, to let Rufus interview all sorts of people, thereby providing their life histories to the reader. This seemed a little forced and convenient to me, although I found their stories interesting. I also found some twists of the plot a little convenient and not entirely believable.

Much in this book turns out to be not as it first appear; as Rufus says in the very first words of the book:

"I am walking down a well-lit path, with incidents neatly labeled and dated, but when I reach halfway memory lets go of my hand, and a fog rises and covers the faces and places, and I am left clawing about in the dark, lost, and I have to make up the obscured moments as I go along, make up the faces and places, even the emotions. Sometimes, to keep on course, I have to return to more recognizable landmarks, and then, with the safety net under me, I can leap onto less certain terrain.

. . .

The fog lifts as suddenly as it descended, and the sun shines brightly again, and once more I am on sure ground, but I know the fog can return again, get into memory's eyes, blinding it momentarily."

NIGERIA

Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga by D. O. Fagunwa
Originally published 1939; English translation 1982; reissued 2013.
Cross-posted from my Club Read thread.



How varied are the daemons that inhabit this forest! Supernatural beings that are part human and part animal, some that are tiny and some that are enormous, some with diverse numbers of body parts, some that are truly vile, and some that can carry out all sorts of magic, for both good and evil. The first novel written in Yoruban, this book is said to have had a great influence on later Nigerian writers; it was translated into English by Wole Soyinka who wrote a very interesting Translator's Note at the beginning of the edition I read.

The novel is in two parts, but both are told by the hunter Akara-ogun to an audience that includes the "author" and that grows with each installment. In the first part, Akara-ogun, whose name means Compound-of-Spells and whose father was also a hunter and "a great one for medicine and spells" and whose mother was a witch, tells the tale of his two trips to the Irunmale Forest, the forest of a thousand daemons, and the adventures and misadventures that he encountered there as he met the varied denizens of the forest. He often had to confront dangerous and magical opponents, and several times was rescued by magical spells. While horrifying and nightmarish at times, Fagunwa's descriptions of the daemons in their infinite variety is utterly compelling, as are some of the characters Akara-ogun meets.

In the second part, Akara-ogun, tells the tale of how he, along with other hunters of his kingdom, is sent by the king on a dangerous mission to Mount Langbodo. Here too they encounter dangers along the route, including more daemons and wild beasts, but when they arrive the nature of the book changes and the hunters listen to lectures on how to be a moral person, told largely through illustrative tales.

I found it hard to understand the two parts of this book as a whole, but I can see in a metaphorical way that it is looking at how people confront what it means to be a human being, both literally and psychologically. The book was originally published in 1939 when Nigeria was still very much a British colony, so I think Fagunwa is also obliquely commenting on what it means to be an African in a world controlled by others. As noted above, his use of the Yoruban language, and of Yoruban folk tales and cosmology, was hugely influential.

My City Lights edition was enhanced by illustrations by Bruce Onobrakepya; one of them is on the cover.

GUINEA

The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye
Originally published 1954; English translation 1965; NYRB edition 2001



In this book, Camara Laye turns the story of the white man visiting Africa on its head, because the experiences of the somewhat hapless white protagonist are seen not only through his eyes but through the reality of African landscapes and people. Clarence has been shipwrecked in Africa, lost all his money gambling with other white people, been kicked out of the white hotel, and is on the verge of also being kicked out of a dirty and decrepit African inn for nonpayment when, in the midst of a celebration linked to the king's arrival in town, he meets a beggar and a pair of teenage rascals. They take him in hand, help him out of a jam when he gets arrested, and allow him to accompany him to the south where, eventually, the king will probably show up, as Clarence believes that, largely because he is white, he can get a job working for the king. Thus begins the tale of Clarence's travels through the forests and his experiences in the town in the south where he winds up and where he is given a job that he doesn't understand.

And much of this book is really about Clarence's lack of understanding or, more accurately, his inability to see what is readily apparent to the Africans around him. From the original town, where buildings seem to fade away, to the forest, where he feels walled in by the trees and thinks he's being led around in circles, to the town hew winds up in, where he has difficulty distinguishing women from each other, Clarence simply can't see what's in front of his eyes. He also can't hear the music and drumming and thinks it's all the same, and is overwhelmed by smells. He thinks people are making fun of his inability to understand their perspective. While the African landscape and town come alive in Camara's writing, as do some vivid characters, much of the book is also symbolic, for example Clarence's inability to stay awake as he his traveling through the forest and his need to be supported by the teenagers (who turn out to be the grandsons of the ruler of the town they end up in) -- Clarence is literally sleep-walking. Towards the end of the book, Clarence starts having dreams and visions in which what is really going on becomes clear to him although he still believes he is dreaming.

This book is more complex than I can really convey. On the surface, it is the story of Clarence's adventures and misadventures, but there is a lot more depth to it in terms of the nature of perception and openness to experience. A lot of it is very funny too, as there is a satiric aspect to it as well. I gained some insight into this book from the introduction by Toni Morrison to my NYRB edition.

NIGERIA

The African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
Originally published 1958, 1960, 1964.
Cross-posted from my Club Read thread.



This trilogy has cast such a spell on me that I can't decide what to read next! I will discuss each novel in turn, but first I want to write more generally about Achebe's accomplishments. For in these books he has combined compelling characters, clever plotting, and deep insight into the strengths and weaknesses of traditional Igbo culture, religion, and government with a piercing look at how British colonialism managed to devastate these traditions and how these traditions in some cases adapted to colonialism. His key characters are flawed, often tragically, and he reveals their flaws with compassion. In her introduction to the Everyman's Library edition I read, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses her debt to Achebe, but also describes his writing as "a Nigerian English and often, more specifically, an Igbo English." I am not entirely sure what she means by this, as nothing jumped out at me as not the English I am used to, unless she is referring to the many proverbs which fill the conversation of the characters and which are used to illustrate the points they wish to make without expressing them directly.

Things Fall Apart
The most famous of Achebe's works, this novel focuses on Okonkwo, a farmer in a precolonial Igbo village who, reacting to what he perceived as his father's failure and weakness, rules his household of several wives with a heavy hand and always takes an aggressive stand when the elders of the village meet to determine, by conversation and consensus, what the village should do to meet the challenges it faces. He was a famous wrestler in his youth, and longs for the warlike times of old. After one of these meetings of the elders, a young boy from a neighboring village is brought to live in Okonkwu's compound as partial payment from the village for the murder of the wife of a man in Okonkwu's village (the other payment is a young virgin from the neighboring village to replace the man's wife). This boy becomes part of the family, but then the spirits that rule the village demand a further penalty that becomes part of Okonkwu's psychological burden. The spirits and the gods definitely rule the village, through their priests and priestesses (who are more or less ordinary villagers the rest of the time), and the scenes with them, along with the scenes of the elders meeting and reaching decisions, together create a vivid portrait of what traditional Igbo life was like. Okonkwu's inability to control his aggression eventually leads him to be exiled from the village for seven years, and when he finally returns things have changed, because the British have arrived, first exerting their influence through religion, with missionaries building churches and attempting to convert the Africans. Indeed, one of Okonkwu's sons, to his dismay, becomes a Christian convert. Later, the administrators, backed up by the army, arrive; too late, the villagers try to rebel, and tragedy ensues.

This is just a broad outline of what is an endlessly fascinating novel. Achebe has deep compassion for Okonkwu's flaws, and for both the beauty and the flaws of Igbo culture. (In her introduction, Adichie remarks that one of Achebe's accomplishments was to demonstrate just how inaccurate and racist European portrayals of Africa were.) It was, of course, a patriarchal society, and if I have one complaint it is how secondary the female characters are in this novel.

No Longer at Ease
In this novel, Okonkwu's grandson Obi -- the son of the son who became a Christian and then an official in the church -- has studied in England and returned to take up a post as a senior clerk in the Lagos government just slightly before independence. The elders of his town, through an organization they have in Lagos, financed Obi's studies in England (although he is supposed to pay them back from his earnings); in fact he is the first person from the town to have this opportunity and, as such, he is expected to return to the village occasionally and act as a returning hero. But the reader knows from the first pages of the novel that Obi is on trial for bribery (while his British bosses wonder how a young man of "such promise" could fall so low); the rest of the book fills in how he got to that point. For Obi is betwixt and between in many ways. He was expected to study law, but studied English instead. He receives various perks (like a car!) along with what seems like a good salary, but has expenses that eat it up: familial and traditional ones like repaying his scholarship, paying for doctors for his mother, and supporting a brother's school expenses, but also those related to living in a city including, unexpectedly, insurance for his car. He falls in love with a girl, but there are traditional constraints to his ability to marry her and, despite the almost always good advice of a friend from his village, Obi is surprised when his father, who after all is a Christian, still believes in some Igbo religious traditions. For me, this was the weakest of the three novels, but I still felt sorry for Obi who, although weak in some ways, is caught between the present and the past, the traditions and the colonial bureaucracy.

Arrow of God
For me, this was the most remarkable of the three novels, capturing the meaning of Igbo religious practices and the strength of village and personal relationships while at the same time illustrating the rift that white colonial rule created in those traditional structures. It takes place in the period between the first two novels, when British political administration had been established in Nigeria, and focuses on Ezeulu, half man, half spirit, the Chief Priest of Ulu, who is the chief god of a loose alliance of six villages. Ezeulu takes his religious obligations very seriously, and is mostly respected in his village, but several people are opposed to him because, during a prior dispute with another village, he told the truth to the local British administrator, Captain Winterbottom, who then praised him, and thus he is accused of having a friend who is a white man. In addition, he has various issues with his wives and his children, one of whom he sent to study with the British. The novel, which includes sections told from the perspective of Winterbottom and his colleagues, dramatically and insightfully illustrates the clash between two completely different civilizations which completely fail to understand each other. To the British, Africa is hot and uncomfortable and the people are stupid if not savages; to the Africans, the British have no awareness of the importance of family relationships, traditional customs, and spiritual obligations. Of course, the British have the army behind them so the clash is unequal.

Ezeulo is a complex, thoughtful man who can ever so slightly see that perhaps some accommodation to the white man would be useful; however, he draws the line by refusing to accept a position they want him to take. Ultimately, the weight of his spiritual beliefs leads to a conflict with the people that ends in a loss of power, and tragedy. I found this novel utterly compelling in its portrayal of a man, his deeply held beliefs, and the impact of colonialism on a traditional culture.

NIGERIA
The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka
Originally published 1965.



The interpreters are a group of friends in newly independent Nigeria who have returned from study abroad (in England and the US) to take up positions in the new environment: one is a journalist, one a descendent of village chiefs, one a sculptor, one a painter, one (the only woman in the group) some kind of minor government worker). There isn't much plot; in Soyinka's dense, often allusive prose, the reader learns about the individuals in turn, often returning to their pasts before coming back to the present. Soyinka introduces other characters to give a fuller picture of life in the new country, and thoroughly satirizes many of them, including those who are corrupt and those who are still imbued with British traditions. Religion plays a part in the novel as well, both the traditional Yoruban gods and Christianity. In addition, parts of the novel are quite funny, and parts are quite scatological, including a theory held by the journalist character.

I had a hard time knowing what to make of this novel, which I read thanks to a suggestion by janeajones. Clearly Soyinka is trying to paint a broad picture of both the challenges of a postcolonial society and the conflicts encountered by young men eager to find their way in a changing world. I found the women not as well developed as the male characters, and when a character reveals his homosexuality (a character who is already "confused" because he is an American in Nigeria and because, although he appears white, he is a quarter black and yearns to be thought of as black), other characters are disgusted. A lot that happens in this novel is symbolic in some way, especially the appearance in the second part of a strange church leader and his "apostles," including a young former thief re-named Noah. I would probably have to read this book again to make more sense of it, but it remains an interesting portrait of a time and place, including a vivid feeling for the waterways around Lagos before the environmental and cultural disaster caused by oil drilling.

Soyinka was the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for literature and is mostly known for his plays and memoirs; this is one of only two novels he wrote.

NIGERIA

Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay (Audiobook)

I didn't embark on this book as a Reading Globally book but by the time I finished it, I realised that it was intimately linked to Nigeria. Poet and author Jackie Kay weaves the story of her search for her birth parents - her mother in the conservative confines of a Scotland of the past, her father at the end of a red dust road in Nigeria, one that brought him to Scotland for scholarship and that leads Kay back to her Nigerian homelands for the first time as an adult. Spinning the tale from words which lend hope to an otherwise difficult piece of personal and social history, Kay's narration pulls you into this journey along the red dust road to her past and one view of Nigeria's present. As a writer, she crafts characters that are alive in the narration and I left the book feeling that I had walked some of the way on that road alongside her, marvelling at both the foreignness and the familiarity of the Nigeria envisaged here. The narrative moved between time-frames but this shifting landscape was always tied to the road of discovery Kay was travelling and for me, this added to the music of the book. I would definitely recommend listening to this on audio as Kay's narration brings a small measure of magic to the story that my internal voice would have lacked.

NIGERIA

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma

  

My rating:

This novel is set in Akure, Nigeria in 1996 during the military regime of General Sani Abacha, and it is narrated by Benjamin, the fourth child of six in a stable and content Christian Igbo family. The authoritarian head of household works for the Central Bank of Nigeria, and one day he is told that he will be transferred to a branch in a distant city, one which was torn by sectarian violence against the Igbo tribe earlier that year. He decides that it is too dangerous to move the entire family there, so his unhappy wife is left in charge of their five boys and one infant girl in his absence.

Despite their parents' pleas to behave themselves and stay away from the Omi-Ala River in town, which for many years had been forsaken by Akure's residents, who believed that it was an evil place populated by ritualists and malicious spirits, the four eldest boys decided to start fishing in the river after school. On one day they encounter the town's madman, Abula, who was feared for his dark but often accurate prognostications about those who crossed his path. After the boys taunt Abula, he casts his eye on the oldest brother, Ikenna, and he tells the boy what his fate will be.

From that point forward the lives of Ikenna and the rest of the Agwu family are affected by Abula's dire prophecy, as the family's Christian's faith comes into conflict with long held village beliefs, in a topsy turvy version of Chinua Achebe's classic tale Things Fall Apart.

The Fishermen was a well written and enjoyable coming of age story, which would work well as a young adult novel but is a bit too simplistic for the Booker Prize longlist, IMO. It's a worthwhile read, but I'll be very surprised if it is chosen for the shortlist.

I managed to clear a few African books from my TBR shelf in 2018. Those relevant for this thread are both covered in full in my Q1 thread, http://www.librarything.com/topic/278102

The interpreters (1965) by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria, 1934- ) - a group of young people full of optimism for the new Nigeria in a very sixties novel destabilised by unexpected incursions of African spirituality
Ìsarà: a voyage around "Essay" (1990) by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria, 1934- ) - novel based on the life of the author's father and his progressive friends in the years before WWII.

(Note: I used the term "African" below because Aidoo, like many Black intellectuals of her generation and especially sub-Saharan Africans who have lived in exile, has pan-Africanist tendencies.)

Added because this significant author hasn't been mentioned before.

Changes by Ama Ata Aidoo (most famous for Our Sister Killjoy) is a social realist novel about a middle class urban Ghanaian woman who falls out of marriage and into love, with all the consequences for herself and her extended family, told from an African feminist perspective. The author manages to be both sharply perceptive and amusingly witty without sacrificing realistic portrayal. It's also freer in form than traditional European novels, with more influence from oral culture and West African conversational style. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Quotes

I'm laughing so hard: "years of having a clever woman in his home and an unbroken chain of rather stupid heads of department at his place of work had taught him not to take anything for granted in a discussion."

LMAO: "Indeed the only opinion Musa Musa could possibly have shared with African heads of state is that any discussion of mortality is treason and punishable, by death of course, if the circumstances are right."

Grandma on marriage and society: "... remember a man always gained in stature through any way he chose to associate with a woman. And that included adultery. Especially adultery. Esi, a woman has always been diminished in her association with a man. A good woman was she who quickened the pace of her own destruction. To refuse, as a woman, to be destroyed, was a crime that society spotted very quickly and punished swiftly and severely."
...
"Life on this earth need not always be some humans being gods and others being sacrificial animals. Indeed, that can be changed."

On adaptive traditions: "All the spirits should have been appeased: ancient coastal and Christian, ancient northern and Islamic, the ghost of the colonisers."

I read The Desert and the Drum by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk, set in Mauritania, which is about a young, high caste, Bedouin woman, Rayhana, who becomes disillusioned with her nomadic tribe, and their traditions, and leaves alone for the unknown in a nearby city to search for her only urban social contact, her mother's escaped slave (note: slavery is illegal in Mauritania but some high caste Arabs and Bedouin still hold lower caste and generally darker-skinned people as slaves), and her child born outside marriage, stealing her tribe's sacred drum as vengeance on her way out. Anyone who knows how hostile societies can be to an inexperienced woman without a back-up network will understand that the protagonist's life isn't likely to improve under these circumstances.

Before reading, I had qualms about a middle aged man from a traditionally gender-segregated society writing in the first person from the point of view of a teenage girl but the author is either keenly imaginatively empathetic or has spent a significant amount of time actually listening to young women or both, perhaps due to his experience as a journalist. I found the protagonist and her reactions realistic, complete with her youthful tendency to self-dramatise and her limited perspective on life because of her sheltered upbringing. The text doesn't shy away from depicting Mauritania's caste system, including illegal slavery, or mentioning other systemic problems such as corruption, although this brutal honesty is balanced by the humane decency of a few individual characters. However, anyone expecting an unlikely happy ending will be disappointed.

I won't spoiler the ending, because this is one of those rare stories that I think truly deserves to be read along with the protagonist as a journey into the unknown, but I will mention that the whole book works as both a contemporary style novel and a nuanced political allegory, and anyone who thinks the point of the story is that the high caste protagonist should have stayed at home without straying needs to ask themselves how any of the high caste women anywhere in this scenario would survive if their slaves escaped to live their own lives, for themselves, and their high caste dependents had to actually work for their own keep.

The prose is simple but effective, and Rachel McGill's translation seems sympathetic to Mbarek Ould Beyrouk's original.

I also love the cover art by ReeM Al-Rawi (and you can find more on her website).

Quotes

"I didn't sleep that night. I worried about what the next day might have in store, in this city I'd been told was merciless, where life could slap you down and no one would even bother to look. I was afraid of what might befall me in such an enormous camp of stone and cement, where nothing was quiet yet nothing ever spoke to me. I trembled to think that my lost love could be hidden somewhere in this chaos of soulless dwellings and lives, that the sneers of heartless city people might have wiped away his smile."

NIGERIA

I just finished reading A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe.

here's the review I wrote about the book:

Chinua Achebe almost effortlessly build such beautiful characters. Let's look at Odili- upright, scornful of the direction his country is taking, yet happy with his little assignment at the Grammar School. Then the possibility of a scholarship comes along and his 'dissent' starts turning into action. He decides he needs this scholarship anti the current theme of Western educated elite being treated like pariahs. He almost 'dissents' by going and living with Chief Nanga and his family- someone he is shown to have developed a detest for- and admires his multi-bungalow, flushed-toilets lifestyle. A minor dissent is trying to bring his girlfriend Elsie and her friend home for the gentleman's company. And then of course that fateful incident which leaves him like someone 'with an elephant carcass on their head toeing around for a grasshopper' (I only remember this one but the book is full of such delightful local similes). He then dissents by joining the 'left-leaning intellectuals led common people party' (as described in a beautiful introduction by Karl Maier) and contesting the chief's seat and vying for the affection of his upcoming wife. What follows is tragic and yet beautiful.

Odili is such a real character- full of interesting twists and turns and choices.

This is the first Chinua Achebe book I've read and definitely won't be the last.

The author Inua Ellams, who now lives in London, is originally from Nigeria and this book includes several poems about Nigeria and Benin amongst other places (also England and Ireland, and expatriate African cultures in the UK).

Y'know the phrase "What the actual fuck?" Warning for a lot of that sort of thing.

I read The Actual, by Inua Ellams, which is his fifth poetry collection (and his umpteenth publication). How did I love this? Let me count the ways. Except I don't have time so here's my execution of a summary.

I love the cover, which gives precisely 46 fucks... gold-plated fucks in fact.

I love the decorative illustrated 2Pac endpapers in recto and verso.

I love the poems, yes, all of them, except page 64 because Fuck / Dust!

I especially loved:

Fuck / Sympathy "Because Christ was the first Black man lynched / who went viral /"

Fuck / Border Guards "Heavy-booted and uniformed / the armed who man the borders / of narrative and myth /"

Fuck / Perseus "and Poseidon stayed silent / his crime forgotten when Perseus won / And story by story / myth by myth / urban legend by urban legend / locker room talk by locker room talk / men make other men "

Fuck / Diminutives "/ our tails are dark blue flames / our hooves are coal half-crushed to diamonds / The racecourse is obstacled with glass ceilings / slow squad cars and niggling doubt / Our task is to reach the end with our selves / our names intact /"

Fuck / Logophobia "/ Things we don't have words for in our language don't exist / I have an autistic niece /"

Fuck / Camels (but don't fuck with amusing tall tales about camels, that aren't quotable)

Fuck / The Joker "enough to sidestep the foolish machismo /"

And absolutely Fuck / Batman for spreading covid-19!

I do have one minor historical nitpick from Fuck/Empire 4/ about Benin: "There were boys play-fighting in the soft grass / girls with half-braided hair snoozing beside their mothers / There were infants trying to catch flies idling by in the heavy heat / fathers working the wide fields /" Because which gender, in that part of Africa as in most of the pre-mechanised world, did and still does most of the food growing, the food harvesting, the food marketing, and the food preparation? Although there are rare times when there are more men in the fields and more women at home because there's always one exception to any rule (like this is the one exception to the Inua Ellams is always spot on rule, lol).

5*

>33 spiralsheep: Nice review of The Actual, spiralsheep. I'll purchase the Kindle version of it now.

CABO VERDE (CAPE VERDE)

Book #28: The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo by Germano Almeida

  

My rating:

The recently deceased Napumoceno da Silva Araújo was widely regarded as a pillar of the business community in the port city of Mindelo on the island of São Vicente, as he was perceived to be a self made man who emigrated to the city from the nearby island of São Nicolau as a poor orphaned boy with a few escudos to his name, but died a wealthy man who owned one of the largest and most successful trading companies in Cabo Verde. He was known to be a modest lifelong bachelor with no love interests who generously donated to the poorer residents of São Vicente, was free from corruption or excessive ambition, and kept mainly to himself, with few friends or visitors to his hilltop home.

In keeping with the law his last will and testament, numbering 387 pages, was read in the presence of a notary and witnesses who knew Senhor da Silva Araújo, including two acquaintances and his nephew Carlos, a driven and unscrupulous young man who stood to inherit everything as the only surviving relative, even though he openly mocked and privately despised his aged uncle. To everyone's surprise, Araújo left nearly all of his wealth to a young woman, Maria de Graça, whom he named as his daughter, and Carlos was only given a small piece of property.

As the testament is read the details of Araújo's secret life are slowly revealed, including Maria de Graça's conception, his other trysts, and the true love of his life, Adélia, who is known to no one. Maria de Graça takes it upon herself to find out who Adélia is, and to learn more about her father, who she believed to be only a godfather until his death.

The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo is set around the time of Cabo Verde's independence from Portugal in 1975, and it provides an interesting view of life in Cabo Verde, on the island of São Vicente, and in the port city of Mindelo, which grew rapidly due to the influx of immigrants from other Cabo Verdean islands due to famine in the 1940s and 1950s, and was unique in terms of its ethnic diversity and lack of established hierarchy and political structure.

Germano Almeida (1945-) is one of Cabo Verde's most celebrated authors, who was awarded the Camões Prize in 2018, the most prestigious literary award in the Lusophone world, which is given annually to an author of an outstanding oeuvre of work written in Portuguese. He received a law degree from the University of Lisbon, and he continues to write prolifically and practice law in Mindelo. The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo was chosen as one of Africa's best 100 books of the 20th century during the 2002 Zimbabwe Book Fair, the only book by a Cabo Verdean author on that list.

Anos Ku Ta Manda by Yasmina Nuny

  

My rating:

Yasmina Nuny Silva is a Guinea-Bissauan poet, spoken word artist, research consultant and magazine editor who was born in Portugal, lived in several African countries, received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Birmingham (UK), and lives, works and performs there. Anos Ku Ta Manda is her first published book, which is a collection of powerful and touching poems about her homeland, her passionate transatlantic love with her partner, life as a Black woman in Britain and a person of color in these difficult and challenging times.

This poem, titled 'Free', is from the page about her book from Verve Poetry Press (https://vervepoetrypress.com/2019/03/29/yasmina-nuny/?v=7516fd43adaa):

Free

I have loved myself to this
place.
To this state.
Enough to preserve when needed,
cry when needed,
war when needed.
Shave, regrow, rebirth
as needed.
Bloom where it is possible,
learn from all of it.
Unlearn to apologize for it –
for
myself.
We been there already,
done that already.
No longer at peace with disrespecting
God
like that.

I liked this poem, but many of the others in this book were even more powerful. The following is a link to a YouTube video of Nuny reading one of those poems, 'A Word to the Black Girls': https://youtu.be/h3iJR5-xeLo

Anos Ku Ta Manda closes with poems by two rising Black British writers, Darnell Thompson-Gooden, a British man of Jamaican heritage whose 'Poems about her' is a moving tribute to a former girlfriend and how she enriched his life, and Ayò, a Nigerian-born poet and medical student, whose poem 'I've Lost My Tongue Help me!', published in Yoruba and English, describes the loss of her mother tongue and her connection to her homeland.

I look forward to reading more of Yasmina Nuny's work, and seeing more of her spoken word performances online or in person. You can read more about her on her web page, https://www.yasminanuny.com.

I read this a couple of months ago, but I still want to post a review, because I thought it was very good and the list hasn't gotten a lot of love lately.

NIGERIA



Say you're one of them by Uwem Akpan (published 2009)

Although I don't often read short stories, the spine of this book caught my eye, and I'm glad it did. Uwem Akpan is a Jesuit priest from Nigeria who was educated in Kenya and the US. He says he wanted to write "a book about how children are faring in these endless conflicts in Africa. The world is not looking. I think fiction allows us to sit for a while with people we would rather not meet...I want their voices heard, their faces seen" (from an interview in The New Yorker quoted in the after matter). The result is a collection of five stories narrated by children who are trying to make sense of a violent world without the help of adults and often at the mercy of them.

In An Ex-mas Feast Jigana is waiting in a leaky shanty in Kenya for his twelve-year-old sister, Maisha, to return. She is a prostitute and the only reliable income for the family. Sniffing glue to stave off the pangs of hunger, Jigana argues with his parents that he would rather give up going to school than have Maisha move to a brothel to earn the school fees.

Fattening for Gabon is the story of ten-year-old Kotchikpa and his five-year-old sister Yewa. They are being raised by their uncle because their parents have aids. In an attempt to increase his fortunes, Uncle Fofo trades his wards for a motorcycle that he can use to illegally ferry more people across the Benin-Nigeria border. He is instructed to teach the children certain things in preparation for their journey to Gabon.

In What Language is That? a younger sibling talks about the relationship between two little girls who live across the street from one another in Ethiopia. They are best friends until sectarian violence breaks out, and their parents forbid them to speak to one another.

In Luxurious Hearses sixteen-year-old Jubril boards a bus of refugees bound for southern Nigeria. Ethnic cleansing has swept through the north, and despite considering himself a conservative Muslim, one who has willingly submitted to Sharia law, he is targeted by his friends for having Christian relatives. The bus is a microcosm of society as a whole and conflict between religions, genders roles, politics, civilian/military, and age consumes the passengers.

The last story, My Parents' Bedroom is the shortest but most devastating. Nine-year-old Monique is from a blended family. Her mother is Tutsi and her father is Hutu. One night she is told to watch her younger brother and to not open the door for anyone.

Despite their horrific nature, each story contains a moment of grace: an act of kindness that, although unable to mitigate the present, offers a glimmer of hope for the future. Sometimes a child can be saved, sometimes a person of one religion will protect a person of another religion, sometimes an adult is a safe person. But not often. And there are always consequences.

These stories are well-written and, with the exception of Luxurious Hearses which drags a bit, page-turners. I can't say I enjoyed reading this collection, but I am glad I read it.

It's not every day that Wole Soyinka publishes a new novel!

Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (2021) by Wole Soyinka (Nigeria, 1934- )

  

Soyinka has never believed in making life easy for the reader, and this — his first novel since 1972 — is no exception: the action of the plot keeps getting interrupted by long satirical asides that may or may not have something to do with the story. It's almost more of an extended essay with narrative interludes. But it's powerful stuff: Soyinka treats Nigeria with all the kid-glove delicacy of a 21st century Jonathan Swift.

His slightly fictionalised Nigeria is a kleptocracy where there is no longer any meaningful distinction to be made between politics, religion and organised crime. They are all just ways of getting to power and wealth whilst trampling on the faces of the ordinary people and bamboozling them with meaningless spectacle. In earlier times he might have held out some hope for the postcolonial world from African spirituality, but by now — or at least for the purposes of this satirical attack — he's clear that "tradition" and "religious law", whether they are indigenous or come from one of the two great imperialist religions, are just mechanisms the strong use to impose their will on the weak and satisfy their own desires and ambitions, whether at the level of the family or the state.

A bleak picture, and Soyinka doesn't show us any handy way to escape from it. The honest, upright characters in the story are never more than a pinprick annoyance for his arch-villains. But I'm sure he did cheer up innumerable readers by giving the most evil of the evil organisations in the book the name "Human Resources". We always knew... I'm sure a lot of evil HR managers will be getting this in their Christmas stocking.

Nigeria: Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo - 4 stars


A surprisingly beautiful novel about the quest of a middle-aged woman who, after the death of her British mother, finds the diaries her African father left with her mother before she was even born. She decides to look for him, but that search turns out slightly differently than expected.
Chibundu Onuzo has written a beautiful and nuanced story that makes you think about identity, about what it means to grow up without a father in a loving and at the same time hostile environment, about how to deal with the different layers and the evolution of an individual and about what it means to be genetically defined by two cultures, even if one culture is completely foreign to you.
There is so much in this book and yet it never feels contrived. The characters and setting are authentic and believable, the story flows and surprises and remains captivating until the end.
The only downside is perhaps that some themes are not developed enough, but in a way this emphasizes the experiences of the main character. The title is particularly well chosen, btw. Recommended!

Technically, this book is about all of Africa, but the author is Nigerian so I'm posting it here:

Africa Is Not a Country: Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa by Dipo Faloyin - 4 stars


Author’s nationality: Nigerian
Original publication date: 2022
Author’s age when first published: ?
Written in: English
Read in: Dutch translation
Format: audiobook
Genre: non fiction

Why I read this :
In my preparation for the African Roman Challenge I was looking for some kind of overview of African history. This book came up and while it wasn't really what I was looking for (I can see a pattern emerging here…), the synopsis tickled me enough to read it.

Summary:
In this intriguing book, the Nigerian journalist Dipo Faloyin who was born in the US, spent his childhood in Nigeria and now lives and works in London, challenges us to look at Africa differently. Because, for various reasons, we still use stereotypes and prejudices that are detrimental to the development of this continent.
After a first chapter in which he tells the story of how Africa was divided among the Western powers, he explains why charities such as Band Aid are so harmful, that there is much more diversity within Africa than Westerners think. There is a hilarious chapter about how Hollywood filmmakers should portray Africa to fit all the clichés, but he also explains the variety of African dictatorships and the impact of foreign influence, the link with supremacists, the outrage over the plunder of African art and heritage, he writes about the jollof rice war that Jamie Oliver unintentionally unleashed and finally also about possible future prospects for the continent. The common thread running through his story is the author's concern that Africa is being robbed of opportunities by all those wrong assumptions that drive investors away, simply giving a wrong picture of a continent in full development.

My comments:
The author sometimes rambles on and repeats himself, but it never gets boring. It may be necessary to emphasize the seriousness of the message, especially since Dipo Faloyin writes in such a disarmingly humorous, sometimes hilarious way. I can’t really say the facts he mentioned were unknown to me, but he presents them in a way that makes me think and see things from a different perspective.
I don't always agree with the author and I had hoped he would make more suggestions to improve Africa's image, but Faloyin has already given me a lot to chew on. He has made me think and I accept his invitation to try to stay away from clichés and prejudices when looking at this beautiful and fascinating continent.

Recommended for:
Anyone who’s interested in Africa and would like to look at it from a different angle.

CABO VERDE



Madwoman of Serrano by Dina Salústio, translated from the Portuguese by Jethro Soutar
Originally published in 1998, English translation 2019, Dedalus, 228 p.

This is the first novel by a female author to be published in Cape Verde, and the first to be translated into English.

The novel opens in Serrano, an isolated village on the cusp of modernization. It is a mystical place, full of magical realism. The midwife is the most powerful member of the village, delivering babies and whispering their fates to them, initiating boys into manhood, and using her wisdom to maintain the balance between nature and the inhabitants. Watching over everything as both an outsider and the ultimate insider is the madwoman, reborn every 33 years until her fate is fulfilled.

Jeronimo leaves the village to fulfill his military service and wants to stay in the city and be a mechanic, but he promises his father to return and tend their land. One day he finds a delirious woman in the woods and falls in love with her. He is an intermediary between the rural village and the modern city.

Filipa lives in the city and is a successful businesswoman, but feels empty and rudderless since she left Serrano as a child. Life in the city is modern and sensible, but she misses her father and her friend, the madwoman.

Moving back and forth between village and city, Jeronimo and Filipa, the novel explores themes of urbanization and environmental degradation, female empowerment, and the murky delineations between sanity and madness. The author's language reflects the environment, being lush and convoluted when the action takes place in Serrano and almost staccato when in the city. Recommended for those interested in magical realism and/or ecofeminism.

GUINEA BISSAU



The Ultimate Tragedy by Abdulai Sila, translated from the Portuguese by Jethro Soutar
Originally published 1995, English translation 2017, Dedalus Books, 187 p.

The first novel from Guinea Bissau to be translated into English, it is set during the years leading up to the armed revolt against the Portuguese. This time of budding political consciousness and desire for action in the 1950s is the backdrop for a love triangle between a young woman, a local leader, and a semi-assimilated teacher. Each of the three narrates part of the story.

Ndani is thirteen when she follows the advice of her father's fourth wife and moves to the city to become a housemaid. She had been warned that Whites were not like Blacks and lived very differently, and the first couple of chapters are her attempts to understand them. The point of view then shifts to the Régulo, or minor king of a village, and his interactions with the White administrator of the region. He develops ideas about peaceful resistance against the Portuguese colonizers. The point of view then shifts again, this time to the Black teacher, educated by Portuguese priests to be a native mouthpiece for Christianity, and his relationships with the other two. The last chapter brings the reader back to Ndani.

Although the allusions are a bit heavy-handed at times, overall this was an interesting snapshot of a particular moment in Guinea Bissau's history. The evolution of perspective of the Portuguese colonizers is represented by the White woman for whom Ndani works. She goes from denigrating Blacks to wanting to convert them to starting schools to create native teachers who can evangelize on their behalf. Ndani is at first in awe of her White employers, but quickly learns that they can be cruel and capricious. The Régulo initially has a mutually beneficial relationship with the administration, but that rapidly deteriorates. The teacher was educated to believe in Catholicism, but realizes that his own people espouse similar ideas, without the hypocrisy displayed by the Portuguese colonizers. Everything is in flux as the country moves toward a fight for independence.

NIGERIA



The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta

Nnu Ego is the daughter of an Ibo chief and his favorite mistress, a headstrong woman who refuses to marry him or live in his compound. On the night that Nnu Ego is conceived, a horrible incident occurs which will overshadow Nnu Ego's life, for an angry spirit becomes her chi, a spiritual force that influences her life for good or ill.

Nnu Ego is raised lovingly and is married to a kind man whom she loves. Unfortunately, she is unable to conceive, even though many sacrifices are made to try and appease her chi. She returns home in disgrace when her husband takes another wife. Her father makes another match for her, sight unseen, with the son of a local family, although he lives in Lagos. When she shows up at the white man's compound where her new husband lives, she is dismayed to find that he is nothing as advertised.

Life with Nnaife is difficult from the beginning, but the one bright spot is that she soon becomes pregnant. This is the goal that she has been taught to strive for: motherhood. Her self-worth, societal standing, position in the family, everything, depends on her having children, especially boy children. Boys will grow up to take care of the family, the younger siblings, and her when she is old. Girls are helpful around the house, cheap because they don't need much education, and bring a handsome bride price at a young age. But the joy of motherhood is short-lived. Child mortality is high, poverty and malnutrition are constants, and her husband is neither supportive nor a good provider.

World War II brings great changes, none of them good. Throughout everything, however, Nnu Ego struggles to keep the boys in school. They are the future of the family and her social security. But as the years pass, traditional customs become alien to children raised in the city, and Nnu Ego finds herself struggling to understand how her life has turned out as it has.

The Joy of Motherhood is a most ironic title, both in the personal and societal sense. Nigeria undergoes tremendous change between the 1930s and 1950s, and traditional supports are undermined before new societal structures have been built. Nnu Ego is stuck between her traditional rural upbringing and the modern city in which she finds herself. While some women are able to navigate the changes, she is left behind. The novel is focused both on the micro, the life of one woman, and the macro, the place of women in Nigerian society. This is a book that I will be thinking about for a while.

NIGERIA

One Man, One Matchet by Timothy M. Aluko

Timothy M. Aluko’s One Man, One Matchet (1964) is a very sharp novel of pre-independence Nigerian village politics. Aluko had been a civil administrator, so he knew whereof he spoke. He also was a trained engineer - not the most usual background for a novelist.

Aluko purposefully only reveals the year, 1949, well into the book. So there was 11 years yet to go before independence, which I am sure felt like a LONG time in the living of it. The characters in the novel who are most anxious to throw off the British yoke will not be satisfied anytime soon, and that knowledge really affects one’s reading of the second half of the book.

“Matchet”, by the way, is a variant form of “machete”.

I really like the Heinemann African Writers series, and pick up volumes whenever I can.

SENEGAL



So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ, translated from the French by Modupe Bode-Thomas
Published 1980, English translation 1981, 96 pages, Waveland Press

So Long a Letter is an epistolary novel and semiautobiographical. It is a series of letters by Ramatoulaye Fall to her lifelong friend, Aissatou. Both women are betrayed by their husbands, who take second wives, but they respond in very different ways. This is a gentle novel, not forceful like Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood or as anti-Colonial as Nervous Conditions. Instead the reader is brought into Ramatoulaye's personal space as though these intimate letters are addressed to us, and we are invited to understand her perspective even if, like Aissatou, we would have chosen to act differently. I very much enjoyed this short novel and wish that Bâ had been able to continue writing (she died at age 52, shortly after her second work was published). So Long a Letter won the Noma Award for best novel published in Africa in 1980.

SENEGAL



At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis
Published 2018, English translation 2020, 145 p.

But I, Alfa Ndiaye, I understand the true meaning of the captain's words. No one knows what I think. I am free to think whatever I want. And what I think is that people don't want me to think. The unthinkable is what is hidden behind the captain's words. The captain's France needs for us to play the savage when it suits them. They need for us to be savage because the enemy is afraid of our machetes. I know, I understand, it's no more complicated than that.

Alfa is a twenty-year-old Senegalese soldier fighting for the French colonizers in the trenches of World War I. The book opens with Alfa lying beside his dying brother-in-arms, Mademba. The two had been inseparable throughout childhood and on the battlefield, now Mademba is begging Alfa to "finish him off" rather than let him die in pain and indignity. Alfa refuses to kill his best friend, setting off a downward spiral of doubt, guilt, recrimination, vengeance, and madness. Told entirely from Alfa's point of view, the book is brutal and dark, portraying not only the horrors of war but of colonial racism.

Once I began reading, I could not put the book down, and finished it in a single sitting. I then went back and reread the ending twice more. There is so much to unpack in this small volume. It's also beautifully written, even descriptions of horrible acts read lyrically. It's easy to understand why it won the International Booker Prize in 2021. Although it will not be a book for everyone, if you are interested, I recommend it highly.

Yes, I understood, God's truth, that on the battlefield they wanted only fleeting madness. Madmen of rage, madmen of pain, furious madmen, but temporary ones. No continuous madmen. As soon as the fighting ends we're to file away our rage, our pain, and our fury. Pain is tolerated, we can bring our pain home on the condition that we keep it to ourselves. But rage and fury cannot be brought back to the trench.