Welcome to the world of ‘Boys, Girls and Beasts’, Nathaniel Bivan’s debut novel set in 2068 and beyond in the United Nations of West Africa, where most people speak Wa Creole, a blend of all the pidgin English in the nation, where scrambled memories are imposed through rituals to create a wedge between yesterday and today.
We are familiar with parts of this country, but the bulk of it is strange and scary. It is simply a crazy world, one where sense and sensibilities are rare commodities, where aliens from realms unknown call the tunes. Yet, this is a country whose most-developed part boasts of electric trams, high speed expressways, and suspension bridges.
The opening chapters are thick with blood, dust, and sweat, evoking all the violent imagery these elements often conjure. They suggest a dark, complex narrative, one whose conclusion may be fraught with complications. Pain and death are hinted at, drawing the reader in with an irresistible pull to uncover more.
Bivan’s action-packed debut examines power struggle in a unique way. It is set in this fictitious West African nation created without bloodshed; however, fifty years later, things fall apart, largely because of its prosperity, a prosperity tied to a super grain that is milled for flour, compressed for oils, used to heal many ailments, and condensed into several types of fuel.
As we follow Jaka (alias Tiger) and the other boys and men, all now struggling to remember their past, we see defeated UNWA soldiers and a people left to defend themselves. We see radicalised boys who prioritise instincts over reason and act first then think later.
In the war, girls are also involved, but not in the same way as boys. Unlike boys who are warriors taking over one district after the other, girls are bearers of bombs and those of reproductive ages are vessels to birth the next generation of warriors, the special breeds who will ensure the earth belongs to their god.
This patriarchal arrangement seems to suggest that the oppression of the female folk will be with us in 2068 and beyond.
It also brings to mind how terrorists exploit girls and women as suicide bombers. They are just vessels to carry and detonate bombs and to also satiate warriors’ sexual needs and bear their children. And all these evils, including the rape and forced marriage, are done in the name of their god, whose wish and will they are convinced they are doing even as they look forward to a bountiful harvest in the afterlife.
Interestingly, not all boys and girls are considered useful. The useless ones are wasted, killed in the most brutal of ways.
There is a very germane angle to this amazing book and it is the one that situates the cause of the war in UNWA as something beyond the ordinary, something orchestrated by extraterrestrial forces because they need to take over the earth and claim it for themselves on behalf of their god, Zohrar.
It’s an approach bound to make a reader view this novel from a prism other than the one in the first three chapters. This Zohrar angle takes the plot off the bus and throws it on a super jet and the resulting effect is a speed that leaves the reader gasping as he or she races through the rest of the pages in search of answers to the twists and turns; it is an angle that takes away the ordinariness of how the country came about, how it became so prosperous and how things were run before the war. It is an angle that raises posers: Is man a spiritual being? Is the earth controlled by forces ordinary eyes can’t see? Are forces beyond the ordinary at meetings where important decisions about nations are taken? Are there spirits in human flesh in our world? Should spirits in human flesh die? And, is this world a case of the more we look the less we see?
The futuristic setting of the book allows the author the latitude to delve into the fantastical with remarkable freedom and the outcome can be likened to a meticulously constructed house, each brick laid with care, the cement perfectly mixed, the pillars solid, the furniture thoughtfully placed, resulting in a space that is not just functional but inviting and warm.
The author’s generous dose of poetic prose and a seamless blend of simple, compound, and compound-complex sentence structures infuse the writing with a vibrant, sizzling energy that enhances the storytelling.
The concluding part of the novel is absolutely soulful.
A new star is here!
Olukorede S Yishau is the author of In The Name of Our Father, Vaults of Secrets, United Countries of America and Other Travel Tales and After The End.
