One Leg on Earth does not merely establish these themes of class inequality and environmental degradation; it weaves them into a dreadful mystery that also incorporates strains of Yoruba folklore. As more pregnant women surrender to watery deaths, Yosoye is plagued by nightmarish visions and ominous signs.
Book Review
However marginal Kanneh-Mason’s Britishness may be, it is an identity that confers her more than a modicum of privilege elsewhere and it is rather unfortunate that she does not probe this contradiction further. There is no mention, for instance, of the criticism her family has received in Antigua where their status as state-appointed cultural ambassadors is perceived to have come at the expense of local calypso artistes whose musical contributions are more entrenched in Antiguan society.
But The Comfort of Distant Stars is not exclusively a novel of lofty ideas and grave philosophy. Running beneath the intellectual current is the quiet drama of Ezeani’s troubled life and its constant entanglement with Anyanwu’s contested existence, driving a turbulent dynamic that keeps the novel emotionally tethered. And at the heart of it all lies the state of Ezeaniʼs mind, and Echeruo allows us to sit with the sobering possibility of mental debilitation, of genius misunderstood, dismissed, and finally consumed by its own weight.
At the centre of this strange and compelling universe stands Anyanwu, the sun god, a character rendered with both mythical grandeur and startling ordinariness. He is not confined to the heavens or trapped within ancient folklore. Instead, he walks among men. He goes to the cinema in Bodija, drinks palm wine and Fanta, laughs loudly while watching Chinese films, quarrels, fights physically with men and runs to fight another day. The blending of the divine with the mundane gives the novel its peculiar energy and originality. The supernatural is domesticated without losing its mystery, collapsing the boundaries between gods and humans, spirits and flesh.
In each of these slice-of-life stories, Nyang pays equal attention to her protagonists’ emotional lives and the decisions they make in the light of their social pressures and economic realities. In doing so, she also challenges patriarchal norms, however her critiques are measured. Take for instance, the matter of laabaan, a Wolof marital rite where proof of a bride’s virginity is presented post-consummation. While some like the scholar Marame Gueye frame the practice in sex positive terms, Nyang believes otherwise and uses her protagonist Sainabou, who questions the ceremony’s necessity, as a vehicle to remonstrate it.
While a few of the stories either rely too heavily on melodrama for momentum, or race towards tidy, but highly improbable resolutions, the inherent talent of their authors cannot be denied and these missteps can be chalked up to the eagerness of inexperience, after all, this is the first literary outing for many of them.
The motif of silence runs through the novel, shaping its emotional landscape and deepening its tensions. Characters retreat into silence as a shield against pain. In this novel, silence becomes a language of its own. It speaks in pauses, in averted gazes, in unfinished sentences. Relationships are defined as much by what is withheld as by what is expressed, and the gaps in communication often widen into emotional chasms.
On the surface, the book appears to be Abdullahi’s story, but in telling his story, it becomes other people’s stories as well. “Nobody’s story has been as intricately connected with mine in the 20 years that this book covers as Senator Bukola Saraki’s… For most of the journey, I walked under his shadow… Therefore, readers will find that, to a large extent, this book is his story as well,” Abdullahi writes. But in a lot of ways, the book is more Saraki’s story than the memoirist claims.
Interestingly, the strongest story in the collection – the titular Where Women Meet Boys – is one of two narratives written from the female perspective and showcases Shyaka’s skill with handling multiple perspectives. At its heart, it is about the domino effects of a man disappointing his family and so, still falls in line with the book’s overarching theme.
eading Heinneken University, one quickly realizes that plot is not quite the novel’s primary engine. Instead, the narrative is sustained by the actions, thoughts, and voices of a wide array of characters who feel strikingly real and far from exaggerated which is a triumph in satire.
Decorated novelist Chika Unigwe’s latest novel, Grace, raises several questions: Is survival ever morally neutral?…
There is no denying the fact that childlessness is perhaps the most devastating predicament for…