NigeriansTalk

Today I want to take you into the lit­er­ary land­scape of Nige­ria, and not just the reg­u­lar. In the past few years, it seems that our out­put in lit­er­a­ture has grown in leaps and bounds even in the face of poverty and other hin­drances. A Niger­ian has now won the Booker — Ben Okri, the Orange — Chi­ma­manda Ngozi Adichie (who also got the MacArthur Genius Grant), and the Man Booker Inter­na­tional Prize — Chinua Achebe for his life­time achieve­ments. Need I for­get Wole Soyinka who won the first Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in Africa.

In today’s lit­er­ary cir­cles how­ever, we have been blessed with a horde of new and refresh­ing lit­er­ary voices in Lola Shon­eyin (poet and author of So All the Time I Was Sit­ting On An Egg, who is not so new any­way. The col­lec­tion was pub­lished in 1998.), Sarah Ladi­ipo Manyika (author of In Depen­dence), Unoma Azuah (Amer­i­can based author of Sky High Flames), Molara Wood (blog­ger, lit­er­ary jour­nal­ist and story writer), Chika Unigwe (author of The Phoenix), Bim­bola Ade­lakun (author of Under the Brown Rusted Roofs, which was nom­i­nated for the Nige­ria LNG Prize for Lit­er­a­ture), Diana Evans (author of 26a) among many oth­ers. I have only men­tioned a few promi­nent ones as I could not be exhaustive.

In the male cat­e­gory are Jude Dibia (author of Unbri­dled, also short­listed for the NLNG Prize), Helon Habila (author of Wait­ing for An Angel, and win­ner of the Caine Prize), Biyi Ban­dele (author of Burma Boy, who brought us the for­got­ten images of Africans in the big Euro­pean wars), Toni Kan (author of Nights of A Creak­ing Bed, and poems Songs of Absence and Despair), Eghosa Ima­suen (author of To Saint Patrick), Igoni Bar­rett (author of From the Caves of Rot­ten Teeth). If you have not heard any of these names before, then you have not been read­ing from Nige­ria. Last week, poet and short story writer Tolu Ogun­lesi (author of Con­quest and Con­vivi­al­ity) won a “Mini” Orange Prize in a com­pe­ti­tion of short para­graphs.

If you want to read love, sen­sual verses, you may pick up Jumoke Veris­simo’s I Am Mem­ory and jour­ney with her as she chants to the mem­ory of her love. There is also Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl, Nnedi Oko­rafor’s Long Juju Man and Zarah the Wind­seeker — the lat­ter which won her the Wole Soyinka Prize for Lit­er­a­ture. Onyeka Nwelue’s The Abyssin­ian Boy is another fresh addi­tion to the lit­er­ary fir­ma­ment. The young man has been com­pared to Rushdie in style, and his book is a jour­ney between cul­tures, gen­der and gen­er­a­tion, tra­vers­ing Nige­ria and India. I should not for­get Sefi Atta’s won­der­ful writ­ing in Every­thing Good Will Come.

A few days ago, the poet Lola Shon­eyin was fea­tured on the Arts Show where she read from her upcom­ing novel, “The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives”. Lis­ten to, or down­load the pro­gramme here. Today, I read an inter­view of Chi­ma­manda in the Guardian UK. Appar­ently her new book The Thing Around Your Neck has made waves because of its depic­tion of Niger­ian life. I have read Araceli Aipoh’s No Sense of Limts, and now, I’m seek­ing Adaobi Tri­cia Nwaubani’s  I Do Not Come To You By Chance, because I have been told by Ikhide Ikh­e­loa, another online lit­er­ary critic, that it is worth read­ing to glimpse the “com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion in prose-song of the rav­ages of the locust of mate­ri­al­ism on our people’s way of life.”

When I’m not read­ing the books from any of the above, or trawl­ing book­shops or online libraries for copies, snip­pets or reviews, I am read­ing opin­ions from Niger­ian online lit­er­ary colum­nists. Some of my favourites are Ikhide Ikh­e­loa,  Teju Cole and Rukky Ladoja at NEXT Online. I could also be attend­ing pub­lic read­ings. I am sure that you’ve heard of the now famous Nine Writ­ers, Four Cities: a road trip/literature tour of nine writ­ers across four Niger­ian cities. After attend­ing the event at the Cam­bridge House in Ibadan, for­mer home to poet Christo­pher Okigbo, I had blogged about the event, which came to an end on Sat­ur­day, 6th June 2009 at the African Artists’ Foun­da­tion, Ikoyi, Lagos, after hav­ing toured Ibadan, Benin, Warri, and finally Lagos, where it began. I was there also.

The Fara­fina Mag­a­zine is arguably the most promi­nent lit­er­ary mag­a­zine in Nige­ria today. They are the pub­lish­ers of the Niger­ian ver­sion of Chimamanda’s Pur­ple Hibis­cus and Half of a Yel­low Sun, among many oth­ers. Then, there is also Cas­sava Repub­lic , which has pub­lished a few new notable authors includ­ing Toni Kan’s Night of a Creak­ing Bed, Teju Cole’s Every­day is For The Thief, and Abidemi Sanusi’s Zack Story and Kemi’s Story among oth­ers. There was a time when Las­papi hinted of a pub­lish­ing project ini­ti­ated to fea­ture the best lit­er­ary blog­posts from Nige­ria. It was to be pub­lished by Fara­fina. Hope­fully, the project is still in the works since we haven’t heard any­more from its sponsors.

Well, there you have it. Every day in Nige­ria brings fresh new writ­ings. My favourite are those that shock, and take us into sweet realms of fic­tion where we re-discover our­selves in a way we weren’t expect­ing. In clos­ing, I’d like to share a few blogged lit­er­ary pieces that I like. They do not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the best of the Niger­ian blo­gos­phere, but they sure rep­re­sent the recur­ring spirit of our latent cre­ative poten­tial. And since I’m review­ing, let’s just call them my list. First, there is Loomnie’s Fola which I first read in draft as an under­grad­u­ate in the Uni­ver­sity. Then there is 7 Lies: A col­lec­tion of Short Sto­ries by Adeleke Ade­sanya, which is unique and envi­able in its acces­si­bil­ity. The author wrote the works, com­piled them, and sim­ply put them up for pub­lic read­ing and free down­loads. This should surely rank as one long over­due inno­va­tion in the lit­er­ary cir­cles today. In poetry, I rec­om­mend  Aloofar’s Lost, a per­sonal reflec­tive poem that is stun­ning in its sim­plic­ity, and Niger­ian Drama Queen’s Haiku for For­given­ness. If you have the time, you would find many refresh­ing pieces of prose and poetry works on Nairaland.com.

You may also look up my first online pub­lished short story. It is pub­lished on Sto­ry­Time, another online lit­er­ary forum/commune — along with Author-me — where new great fic­tions from all over Africa show up now and again.

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