Dina Yerima-Avazi’s A Blitz in the Haze announces itself with dread.
The novel opens in the quiet town of Samaru, Zaria, with a murder that is both sinister and inexplicable: a young woman falls victim to a shadowy male figure whose murderous violence is carried out with chilling brutality.
By choosing to begin here, Yerima does more than simply shock, establishing a tone of unease that reverberates throughout the narrative.
The novel takes a seven year leap to 2014 and introduces its protagonist, Agnes Ochigbo. Agnes, a beautiful and intelligent university student, is trapped in a suffocating relationship with Rogers, a boyfriend whose manipulative, abusive and adulterous tendencies constantly break her spirit.
Standing by the fringes of this troubled romance is Dayo, Agnes’s steadfast friend, whose gentleness and moral clarity provide the warmth and solace missing from her relationship with Rogers. When Agnes finally leaves Rogers, her new relationship blooms with the freshness of long-awaited rain, a much-needed reprieve from desolation.
This narrative thread extends to other women whose lives and relationships are not as fortunate. Sarah, married to a police officer – Samson, endures brutal cycles of domestic violence. Just as she musters the courage to break free, tragedy strikes: with the re-emergence of a familiar and sinister figure.
The shock of Sarah’s fate collapses the fragile promise of freedom into despair, underscoring the novel’s reminder that suffering often remains unresolved, that life’s capricious turns offer no guarantees.
What distinguishes A Blitz in the Haze is Yerima’s deft modulation of tone. She writes with restraint, allowing her story to unfold with patient rhythm rather than melodrama. The novel is, at once, a moving exhibition of human frailty and resilience.
Its moral architecture is clear: those who perpetuate cruelty without remorse should meet fitting consequences though its allows for a redemption as can be seen in the case of Officer Samson, who, “…becomes “eager to redeem his tarnished image…”, due to the guilt he feels over Sarah. (p. 90).
This simple juxtaposition of selfishness and compassion, depravity and tenderness, is the axis upon which the novelʼs narrative thrust revolves.
However, Yerima’s realism extends beyond the interpersonal. The novel’s landscape is scarred by the specter of the militant terrorist group, Boko Haram. Through carefully grafted historical references, Yerima immerses the reader in the pervasive fear that shadowed Northern Nigeria during the group’s reign of terror.
Vignettes of daily life evoke the collective trauma of a people navigating the thin line between survival and annihilation: “Most people were staying indoors because of the terror alert…Friday was also considered a plausible day for something bad to happen” (p. 44); “In Zaria however, most people were careful to express their opinions cautiously and only let loose all of their steam at home or in trusted company” (p. 88).
And yet, the novel is never reduced simply to despair alone. Yerima imbues Zaria with vitality and texture from the blend of antiquity and modernity, the cadence of its languages, the richness of its foods, and the cultural details that root the story in lived reality. Even the companionship of a pet provides moments of tenderness amid gloom, suggesting that gestures of care, however small, still carry meaning in a fractured world.
As the novel progresses, the psychological darkness of the antagonist emerges in sharper relief, bringing the reader into close contact with the pathology of violence.
The suspense rises until the final act delivers its rapid, action-driven resolution.
If there is a flaw, it lies in the hurried the conclusion: for a novel that patiently explores character, violence, and social context, the tying up of narrative strands feels compressed, leaving some subplots undernourished.
Still, A Blitz in the Haze stands as a remarkable debut. Yerima-Avazi demonstrates an acute awareness of both the personal and the political, capturing the intimate devastations of abuse alongside broader convulsions of a society wracked by terrorism and unrest.
Her prose, attentive and emotionally astute, balances compassion with critique, offering a lens into the complexities of places known and moments lived. Most importantly, it is her characters – flawed, vulnerable, yearning, broken – that define this unique debut. Through them, Yerima achieves not only the rendering of darkness, but also of light: the flicker of hope, the stubborn insistence of goodness, the blitz that cuts through the haze.
***Sima Essien is a writer based in Uyo, Nigeria.
