Nels Abbey’ is the author of Think Like a White Man: A Satirical Guide to Conquering the World … While Black. A graduate of Penguin’s “Write Now scheme”, he has written for the Guardian and London Evening Standard. He spoke to Toni Kan on the sidelines of the London Book Fair, 2024
Toni Kan: Please, tell us your name and what you do.
Nels Abbey: My name is Nels Abe, and I’m a writer.
TK: Is it pronounced Abi or Abe?
NA: Abe. Abi. Abbey. Naija or English, which ever you prefer.
TK: Um, when did you realize you were a writer?
NA: Oh, I think it’s a very good question. I think I realized I was writing when I was in boarding school in Abeokuta. Um, I realized pretty quickly that I gravitated not towards the sports or anything else or the running or the football.
I gravitated towards the press club and I could write articles and do that all day long, all night long. It was just my passion and then it dawned on me right there and then that this is what I’m meant to do.
TK: What’s your favorite book?
NA: My favorite book? It changes all the time but today my favorite book would be The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah.
TK: Why?
NA: It was so unbelievably creative and it opened my mind up to see that there’s conventional ways of writing and there’s unconventional ways of writing and all are welcome.
So you learn from both I mean, mix them all together. She was a very unconventional writer, forthright in her blackness, in her beauty, in her brilliance, and she brought everything to the table and created a book that was so such a different world than the one that I lived in, but it’s such a black world too, an African-American world, and it’s one I really appreciated and um yeah, it pretty much helped cultivate me more as a writer.
TK: So what kind of books have you written?
NA: I’ve written a book called Think Like a White Man: A Satirical Guide to Conquering the World … While Black. It’s a Satire about being a black man in the Corporate World.
I have just re-compiled a book called The Hip-Hop MBA, which is a book about what we can learn from the business of hip-hop over the last 40 years and I’m currently working on a book about a black white supremacist who happens to become Britain’s first black prime minister.
TK: That’s crazy. Alright so um let’s say you’re going to jail.
NA: Oloun ma je. God forbid!
(General Laughter)
TK: So, let’s say you’re going to jail and you’re allowed just one book to go with. What book would that be?
NA: I’ll take the Bible with me. I need all the help I can get.
TK: Why the Bible?
NA: Um, because when I was in boarding school, which is the closest I’ve ever been to jail, it was a book that I gravitated towards and helped me come through it. And also, when you actually listen to verses like: “My cup overflows, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall live in the house of the Lord forever and ever, amen!”
When we say it calmly, it just sounds like ok.
But when you listen to “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
When you read it out loud as if in performance there’s some sort of fire and anger in there. And it just brings something out in you. I’m a Christian man and it’s a source of salvation mental nourishment and it’s a very well written book.
TK: Thank you. Thank you.
NA: Thank you very much.
