The novels of Chigozie Obioma compel critical attention. It is indeed rare for the first two novels of a fledgling author to be shortlisted for the coveted Man Booker Prize. Chigozie Obioma has wowed the world with his craft, especially after his debut novel, The Fisherman, was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2015 and he repeated the feat with his 2019 second novel, An Orchestra of Minorities. His third novel, The Road to the Country, has just emerged as a finalist for Africa’s biggest literary prize, the $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Literature, sponsored by NLNG.
Chigozie Obioma’s novels belong to what he calls “mystical realism”, a realm that interweaves the world of the living, the dead and the unborn. It first occurred to me that Chigozie Obioma was poised to be a strong voice in world fiction for years on end when back in 2015 I got a call from BBC London in an ungodly hour of the night to put in some words on Obioma’s debut novel that was then all the rage. When the book eventually lost out to A Brief History of Seven Killings by Jamaica’s Marlon James one felt that both books were indeed worthy of the coveted prize.
The Fishermen is a coming-of-age novel that bears comparison with classic literature such as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The heart-rending story of four brothers – Ikenna, Boja, Obembe and Benjamin – in Akure is tinged with the magic of myth. The transfer of their father, Mr. Agwu, of the Central Bank of Nigeria out of Akure in the Southwest to Yola in the North unhinges the cosmos of the lives of the young ones, aged from nine to 14. The drama kicks off on the ominous day in January of 1996 when their father drives his Peugeot 504 car out of the gate of their Akure home for the long journey to Yola. Nine-year-old Benjamin is the first person narrator of the story.
Boys will be boys, as they say, and with an absent father, the Agwu brothers are poised to do and undo. Within a span of six weeks the boys rock the town, becoming fishermen at the mysterious Omi-Ala River, and trumping with the campaign team of M.K.O. Abiola. It is at the river that they meet Abulu the Madman who prophesies that Ikenna, the eldest brother, will be murdered, and the other brothers are left in quandary as per who among them would end up doing the killing. It’s akin to King Oedipus hearing that someone will kill his own father and end up marrying his own mother.
The lost paradise of The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma reminds me of the 1954 novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding in which some English private schoolboys, aged from six to 12, luckily escape from a crashed plane over the Pacific only to find themselves on a desert paradise island which they turn into a hellish slaughterhouse. The young Benjamin in The Fishermen eventually has his day in court where he starts with the words – “We were fishermen. My brothers and I became – “ the selfsame words that began the novel. The verisimilitude in a nine-year-old standing trial can only surprise a critic unaware of a country stranger than the strangest fiction known as Nigeria.
In The Bible, Matthew 4:19, Jesus told the fishermen Simon Peter Andrew: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The calling of Chigozie Obioma is original. He has followed the promise of The Fishermen with the equally accomplished second offering named An Orchestra of Minorities in which the long-suffering poultry farmer, Chinonso, stops the lady, Ndali, from taking her life by jumping off the bridge, once upon a consequential night. Chinonso then sells off all his belongings and travels to Northern Cyprus to pursue the Golden Fleece of education so that the wealthy parents of Ndali would accept him as the husband of their daughter. He suffers mightily, gets scammed and imprisoned such that life becomes a bridge too far for the questing man. The novel is remarkably narrated by his Chi, as per Igbo cosmology, and recreates Homer’s Odyssey with contemporary panache.
Chigozie Obioma’s latest novel, The Road to the Country, is a breakthrough depiction of the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967-70 from the front-lines of battle. Kunle, a Law student at the University of Lagos, is ravaged by guilt, never forgiving himself that he caused the crippling of his younger brother, Tunde. Kunle was with his girlfriend Nkechi, and wanted Tunde to get out of the room. He throws a ball for Tunde to catch in the open road, and there happens to be a car accident that cripples the young Tunde. Kunle is traumatized, thus becoming almost a recluse. When Nkechi takes Tunde to the East in 1967, at the start of the civil war, Kunle travels into the heartland of the young republic of Biafra as though for atonement. He gets recruited into the Biafran army, and fights a war he does not really understand. Kunle tells his story while an Ifa Seer “from the back of beyond”, to use Biyi Bandele’s phrase, also does the narration, calling Kunle by Fela’s alter-ego of Abami Eda, to wit, one who would die only to live again.
Chigozie Obioma is sui generis, as he writes in The Road to the Country thusly: “He picks up the papers and begins to go through the ‘story’ he has just written. At once he is surprised by how many of the details about the accident have remained in his mind, even after all these years. It was only this morning that he’d walked into the auditorium near the Law Building and heard a lecturer speak about writing to free oneself. He’d rushed home, picked up a pen and the foolscap notebook. And now, pieces of his childhood – blown in from remote corners of the past – are gathered in these few sheets of foolscap paper.”
Chigozie Obioma’s skills of narration are of the first order, and his vision is indeed vast. He is deserving of any prize in the large canvas of world literature.
**Uzoatu is an independent writer
