Samantha Harvey’s Booker prize winning novel, Orbital, is set in space and over the course of 24 hours and what she describes as “16 sunrises and sunsets in one day” looks at the life of six astronauts.
At a reading in London on the eve of the Booker prize awards, Harvey told her audience that “I didn’t want to write a book set in space. I thought I wanted to write a pastoral.”
That space-pastoral, a slim volume of 136 pages, was awarded the prize for what the Booker judges described as recognition of “its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share.”
The themes of existentialism, nature, climate change, isolation are important when you consider that the book was written during the pandemic and in that light can be seen as a “COVID-19 novel.”
Four years since COVID-19 changed our world, writers are beginning to write the pandemic into literature and they are tackling the subject matter and themes in both fiction and non-fiction.
We look at three Nigerian writers whose books consider the pandemic and its impact from different perspectives.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel in 12 years, Dream Count, is not due out until 2025 but it is already exciting considerable buzz.
Writing about the forthcoming 416 page novel, Brittle Paper notes that “Dream Count is more than just a new book—it’s a monumental return for fans who have been waiting for Adichie to go back to writing long-form fiction. By the time Dream Count comes out next year, it would be nearly twelve years since her last novel.”
The novel is described by its publishers as:
A publishing event ten years in the making—a searing, exquisite new novel by the bestselling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.
***Dream Count will be released in March 2025 from Knopf (Penguin Random House)
Chikwe and Vivianne Ihekweazu’s An Imperfect Storm: A Pandemic and the Coming of Age of a Nigerian Institution published by Masobe Books was released in August 2024 and has in that space of time become a literary event.
There have been public events across the world from Abuja to Lagos to New York and two weeks ago, the couple read to a full house of enthusiastic fans who spilled all the way to the stair case at The Africa Center in London.
The memoir according to a review in The Lagos Review “focuses on Dr. Ihekweazu’s medical training and distinguished public health career in institutions across the world from Germany to the UK and South Africa leading up to his appointment as Head of Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), the country’s premier public health institution.”
But it is at its core an account of how his “dire warnings and call for preparation come to pass with the coming of the pandemic and in this book, he details his and his colleagues efforts to contain the virus despite the challenges that confronted them.”
On the book’s page on Amazon the focus returns to the pandemic; the imperfect storm of the title:
COVID-19 was not just any outbreak, but a seismic shift in world affairs and history, leaving a lasting effect on lives, the economy, health, information dissemination, politics, and ideological systems.
***An Imperfect Storm: A Pandemic and the Coming of Age of a Nigerian Institution is published by Masobe Books
Toni Kan is the author and co-author of 16 biographical wor.ks and in his latest book commissioned by AfreximBank with contributions from Zimbabwean billionaire, Mr Strive Masiyiwa, virologist and public health expert, Dr John Nkengasong, acclaimed banker, Prof Benedict Oramah and renowned economist, Dr Vera Songwe he presents the story of Africa’s response to COVID-19 with literary and journalistic brio.
Written in the creative non-fiction style, Riding the Storm: The Untold Story of Africa’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic tracks the trajectory of response from different perspectives: financial, political, public health and economic ultimately showing that until the “lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.”
On Amazon, promotion for the book opens with an excerpt from the foreword to the book, penned by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa. “The success of Africa’s COVID-19 response should not have surprised the world. The people of Africa have demonstrated time and again, their resilience and ability to work together to overcome even the greatest challenge.”
The marketing material also goes on to note that:
Riding the Storm: The Untold Story of Africa’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic chronicles Africa’s resilience and determination during a borderless crisis. Through the actions of heroes like H. E. Cyril Ramaphosa, Mr Strive Masiyiwa, Dr Vera Songwe, Dr John Nkengasong, and Professor Benedict Oramah, a narrative of leadership, duty and sacrifices emerges. From securing vaccines to complex negotiations, this book tells of the journey to an outcome that surprised the world. In this book, the author presents the facts in an illustrative manner that highlights African innovation, competence and spirit.
***Riding the Storm: The Untold Story of Africa’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic will be published by Narrative Landscape Press in December 2024.
