Months after its release, Obinna Udenwe’s Years of Shame recently earned a major distinction by making it onto Brittle Paper’s 100 Notable African Books of 2025.
It was praised for its assured narrative control, particularly in how Udenwe traces the consequences of a single act of pride across generations. The recognition further consolidates Udenwe’s standing as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary Nigerian fiction.
Years of Shame is his fourth book and third novel, following his collection, The Widow Who Died With Flowers in Her Mouth. His second novel, Colours of Hatred, had earlier drawn critical acclaim, winning the Chinua Achebe Prize for Literature in 2021 after also emerging as a finalist for the Nigeria Prize for Literature in the same year.
With Years of Shame, Udenwe returns in familiar form while pushing his craft further, embarking on his most ambitious literary venture yet. The novel unfolds as a multigenerational epic that intertwines history, philosophy, and fiction into a tragic narrative of immense depth. It echoes the classical traditions of tragedy, particularly what Richard Sewall describes as “the mystery of human suffering, that is basic to the tragic sense of life.”
Its protagonist, Patrice Ikebe, belongs squarely in the lineage of tragic male figures such as Sophocles’ Oedipus, Chinua Achebe’s Okonkwo, and Arthur Miller’s salesman: men propelled toward inevitable ruin by their own hubris while contending with forces larger than themselves.
Udenwe introduces Patrice at a decisive juncture in his life. After accusing Methuselah Enigwe, a labourer, of stealing his money, Patrice insists, against reason, counsel, and communal wisdom, on taking the dreaded ukpa ji-ukpa nwa, a ritual oath whose consequences promise the loss of wealth and children to whoever is in the wrong.
From the outset, the novel establishes the dreadful gravity of this decision. On page 39, an elder observes, “When the gods want to bring down a man’s house, they set in motion a chain of events that lead to his downfall.” Yet as the narrative unfolds, Patrice emerges not merely as a victim of metaphysical forces, but of rigid standards of masculinity that leave him unable to retreat without feeling emasculated. To admit fault, in his mind, would be to embrace weakness. As the novel puts it, “a man’s worth was in the courage with which he tackled a challenge head-on” (p. 43). Earlier still, a man imprisoned for attacking a farmer who touched his wife tells Patrice, “No matter the circumstances, never fail to prove yourself a man” (p. 20). These maxims form the ideological trap that leads Patrice to dig his own grave.
One of the novel’s most compelling nuances lies in Patrice’s contradictory posture toward power. Despite his fierce pride, he endures humiliation at the hands of his employer, Sir Douglas Akidi. Udenwe roots this tension in history. Set against the backdrop of the Ọgụ Teteri (Izii Revolt) of 1969–1970, the novel opens in 1976, seven years after the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War ended. Patrice’s people had participated in the revolt that claimed the lives of many Arochukwu, including Douglas Akidi’s father. As a result, Patrice is persistently demeaned, branded a “Wawa man,” and reminded of his inherited guilt. After a failed business deal that costs Douglas Akidi heavily, this mistreatment peaks.
Patrice’s abrupt reversal of fortune, which is central to the architecture of tragedy, marks his descent from a man who prided himself on proximity to “a man of importance, a figure of affluence” (p. 60) to one ashamed of letting others see “the years of shame he’d passed through now written all over him.” But Udenwe refuses to confine tragedy to a single life. The novel insists on continuity and consequence.
Part Seven opens with a chilling reminder: “God does not act with swiftness. His wrath is like the trickling of the wine from a palm tree.” Over nearly 300 pages, shame, trauma, grief, and pain ripple outward, ensnaring Patrice’s children – Nwele and Susanne, and his grandson, Kosarachi. In doing so, Udenwe explores an Igbo metaphysical worldview in which repercussions are cumulative and inescapable. Even the unthinkable is realized, as the punishments compound toward an abominable climax.
Though marred by a few editorial and printing errors, Years of Shame remains a significant achievement. Udenwe is adept at grafting history onto fiction with ambition and control, offering strong prose, a searching deconstruction of masculinity, a textured engagement with mysticism and culture, and presenting one of the most memorable protagonists in recent Nigerian literature.
Sima Essien is an award-winning writer based in Uyo, Nigeria.
