Why did I go snooping around the vogue digital archive in my school’s library? In my research on Tutuola, I kept coming across references to a Vogue mention of Tutuola’s novel, The Palmwine Drinkard, so I decided to check it out.

It sounded cool that in 1953, before Achebe published his novel that allegedly invented the African novel, Tutuola’s work was already getting such a global play. So I went in search of the Vogue piece on Tutuola’s debut novel to see  how significant it was and how Vogue attempted to sell Tutuola to their largely female audience. As it turned out, the Tutuola reference did not amount to much. It was not even a review. It was nothing—just one sentence in some random segment of the magazine. But I got curious. I dug deeper. I had access to a Vogue archive that went as far as 1892, why not search to see what has been written about Africa and writing in Vogue? That’s how I found this.

It’s supposed to be a funny sketch. A bookseller in South Africa sends a letter to a London publisher asking to buy etiquette books. The book order was placed on behalf of an African reader described as a “kaffir as black as the ace of spades.” Etiquette books a.k.a. “manual on politeness” were popular in the 19th century and were used to teach women the rules of social conduct. But the writer of the sketch  finds the idea of Africans interested in English social etiquette a ridiculous joke.

I can take a joke. I know it’s supposed to be funny. I’ve read everything from Herodotus to Conrad. I know the weird archive of weird stuff that’s been written about Africa and Africans in the western literary tradition. But it’s always still surprises and weirds me out to encounter these documents, to see the form in which Africa circulated as something other—either as a dark scary continent or an object of jest and laughter.

Vogue, Jul 16, 1896

In Amazon’s top 10,000 best selling books list, Americanah ranked #861 the day before Beyonce sampled her TED talk on feminism in the song titled, “Flawless.” Eleven days later and after a 600 jump through the ranks, Americanah was the 179th best selling book on Amazon.

The jump from the 800s to the 100s is nothing short of miraculous. Here is how Robinson Meyer of the Atlantic puts it:

At 5 p.m. on December 12, 2013—the day before the album came out—Amazon ranked Americanah #861 of all hardcover books. Five days later, the book was ranked #632. Today, the book is ranked #179. It’s a staggering rise up the rankings. Moving with such speed through the top 1,000 books on Amazon is a slog, because books in the top couple hundred slots sell much more than books in the low thousands. It’s much harder to advance from #200 to #199 than it is from #2,000 to #1,999. — The Atlantic

Does this mean that Americanah was languishing in poor sales before the sample? Not really. What we know is that sales skyrocketed after the Beyonce sample. But Amazon sales ranking is unstable and dependent on a set of ever-changing variables. As a result, it is not meant to be informative in the sense that there’s so much that it doesn’t tell us. Here is why:

Only the top 10,000 books are updated every hour and the ranking does not depend upon the actual number of books sold, but rather, on a comparison against the sales figures of the other 9,999 books within that same hour. Simultaneously, a trending calculation is applied to arrive at a computerized sales trajectory. So, hypothetically, a book that held a ranking of 2,000 at 2pm and 3,000 at 3pm, might hold a 4,000 ranking at 4pm, even if it actually sold MORE books between 3-4 than it did between 2-3. — askville.amazon.com

In other words, going from #861 to #179 means exponentially higher sales but being at #861 cannot so easily be translated into poor sales. Since we don’t know exact sales figures, we can’t really make conclusions about how well the novel was doing. Amazon sales ranking just isn’t enough.

Besides, thanks to the New York Times, Americanah started its climb up the sales ranks a few days before Beyonce’s album release. Robinson Meyer points this out:

But if you look at the chart of historical sales rank data, you’ll see Americanah had already shot through the rankings before the release of Beyoncé. On December 1, the book was ranked #3,873; On December 6, it was ranked #1,811. It fell another thousand before the release of Beyoncé. What happened? This: On December 4th, the New York Times called Americanah one of the top 10 books of 2013. — The Atlantic

While it is doubtful that Americanah would’ve done much better without the publicity accrued from Adichie’s collaboration with Beyonce, it is safe to say that there is no conclusive evidence to prove that Americanah was redeemed from the abyss of poor sales by Beyonce’s song.

If anything, what I am worried about is the fact that Adichie’s novel needed the NYT Best Book of 2013 list and Beyonce’s sampling to move it up from #3,873. Whatever the actual sales of the novel were, why did it rank so low in the first place?  Americanah—one of the top African novels of 2013—ranked #3873 out of 10, 000. What should that tell us about the financial viability of African novels? As Meyer mentions, the Harry Porter books often held the #1 position on Amazon sales rank for up to one month before they were published. How is that after months of promotion, high-profile reviews, and numerous blog features Adichie’s novel was still that low in the ranks? Is this telling us something about the novel itself or about African novels in general?

The chances are that the year has ended with so much left unfulfilled. Not to mention all the mistakes made that cannot be unmade, moments lost that cannot be regained, hearts broken beyond repair. Why else do we hurry to get ourself in a drunken stupor on New Year’s Eve? Perhaps so that we can forget the sadness felt for all that has been lost in the passing of the year?

But what if instead of losing ourselves in the false happiness of a drunken rave we immersed out thoughts in the nightly vision of a dead year by way of a prayer or a poem? I have in mind the Nunc Dimittis and Gabriel Okara’s poem titled “New Year’s Eve Midnight.”

The Nunc Dimittis is an excerpt from the Gospel and is sometimes sung, after the communion has been taken, to mark the end of the church service. When the baby Jesus was brought to the old man Simeon, he thanked God for fulfilling his promise to allow Simeon see the birth of the messiah before the end of his life. “Lord, now you let your servant go in peace,” Simeon sings, “Your word has been fulfilled.” Having seen the fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation for all mankind, Simeon thought he could now die in peace. The Nunc Dimittis is a song in praise of that beautiful moment when a departure—the end of Simeon’s life—coincides with the arrival of something great and longed for—the birth of Christ. It is also a commentary on that kind of death that gives place to something new and that is therefore easy to bear. The Nunc Dimittis is a song about being reconciled with loss on the basis of a beautiful vision of what the future brings.

In one of the most beautiful elegies on Time I’ve ever read, the Nigerian poet, Gabriel Okara evokes the Nunc Dimittis, but does something strange to it. He writes in the first stanza of ”New Year’s Eve Midnight:”

Now the bells are tolling —
a year is dead.
And my heart is slowly beating
the Nunc Dimittis
to all my hopes and mute
yearnings of a new year.
And ghosts hover round
dream beyond dream.

Read full Poem

Unlike Simeon, the speaker in the poem is sad. His “slowly beating” heart sings the Nunc Dimitis—a parting song— to the unfulfilled hopes and mute yearnings from the old year.  He wants to say to these hopes and yearnings what Simeon says to God: “you let your servant go in peace,” but he can’t because the dead year has refused to stay dead and buried. “A year is dead” but not in peace. Like a ghost, the shadow of the dead year lingers and “hovers round” his dreams of what the new year might bring.

The arrival of a thing longed for is enigmatic in Okara in a way that it isn’t in the Nunc Dimittis. Even before the new year arrives it is already in the company of the ghosts of years past. There is no such thing as pure arrival for Okara. Every arrival retains something of what is supposed to have departed. Also where Simeon sees—and takes comfort in—visions of salvation heralded by Christ’s birth, the speaker in Okara’s poem sees in the future only “shrouded things.” “My heart-bell is ringing in a dawn,” he says, “but it’s shrouded things I see.”

The coming year stands before him as something concealed in the funereal cloth—a shroud—used to cover a corpse. Instead of comfort, we sense disquiet in Okara’s poem. We feel the sadness of inhabiting that strange space in time where the future is blurred because the New Year arrives as a thing enshrouded in the ghostly shadows of dead years.

Simeon’s song is radiant with joy and gratitude for the ending of a life that marks the beginning of another. Okara’s poem is dark and unsettling. But this is because Okara gives a more accurate account of time. Unlike Simeon, Okara wants us to understand that the past never disappears in peace just as the future never really arrives in the radiance of revelation.

Okara’s philosophy of time is a kind of necromancy. If tomorrow, the New Year, the future is never entirely new but carries with it the remains of the old year that is supposed to have died, perhaps the demand that time makes on us is to seek and hold on to that part of the future that is inhabited by things enshrouded in the mystery of death. Perhaps what is novel about the New Year is that it is already dead. The “happy” in Happy New Year is the happiness of the mourner who alone can see the beauty in the liveliness of undead time.

Read what I had to say about the same poem one year ago. HERE.

Teju Cole (Author of Open City) and Taiye Selasi (Ghana Must Go)

I was looking through Taiye Selasi’s Twitter photos and found this one of her and Teju Cole. I couldn’t find out anything about where the picture was taken. The accompanying tweet simply says: “The incomparable Mister Cole.” It’s a lovely picture. Selasi’s smile has a touch of giddiness that a sister might have at meeting a brother. Cole has on his usual suave and collected demeanor, but you can tell he’s just as delighted to be by Selasi’s side.

The image got me thinking about African writers in each other’s company. Reading their work, it’s hard to tell if African writers ever take the load off and just relax. The image of the serious African writer is familiar. So I put together a collection of photos of African writers hanging out, acting silly, or having fun.

Thereis so much about writing that is about friendship and community, as you can see in these photos.

Lola Shoneyin (Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives) and Ama Ata Aidoo (Our Sister Killjoy)

Wainaina Binyavanga (One Day I Will Write About This Place) and Taiye Selasi

Alain Mabanckou (Le Verre Casse) and Lola Shoneyin

Chinelo Okparanta (Happiness Like Water), Sarah Ladipo Manyika (In Dependence), and Noviolet Bulawayo (We Need New Names)

Wainaina Binyavanga and Chimamanda Adichie (Americanah)

Father and Son — Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Wizard of the Crow) and Mukoma wa Ngugi (Black Star Nairobi)

Chika Unigwe (Night Dancer) and Chimamanda Adichie

Wole Soyinka, Siddhartha Mitter, and Teju Cole

Tope Folarin (“Miracle”) and Christie Watson (Tiny Sunbirds)

Alain Mabanckou and Chibundu Onuzo (Spider King’s Daughter)

Victor Ehikhamenor (Excuse Me!) and Wana Udobang (Dirty Laundry)

Ikhide Ikheloa and Wole Soyinka

What does a butterfly and a penis have to do with God, the universe, and the secrets of creation? Perhaps the Bible and quantum mechanics, Satan and Pythagoras, time and the tarantula aren’t such different things. Perhaps when brought in relation they hold the key to the power of poetry.

The Testament of Sand by Nigerian poet, Umar Sidi, explores these quirky and titillating ideas.  In 290 lines of poetry that enchants the open-hearted reader, Sidi explores the thread that runs through the cosmos from man to God and back.

Testaments of Sand is that weird moment when prayer and invocation slips into an erotic love song. Braze yourself because the poem will take you through winding pathways of ideas about time, history, the body, and divinity. 

Warning: DO NOT read this poem like a textbook, meaning don’t try to figure it out. Imagine a question that has lost its answer or a puzzle that has lost its key. If you trying to figure it out, the poem will close itself to you and you’ll leave it having gained nothing. If it’s a only word here, an image there, or a sound, a sentence that speaks to you, hold on to it. 

I am so pleased to begin the year with Umar Sidi’s Testaments of Sand. 

Testaments of Sand (Genesis or Book of God)

*

Al- Arshad poet of sand

Al- Arshad poet of dust

Al -Arshad poet of the testaments

AL – AR – SHAD poet of mud

*

Al- ARSHAD poet of sand
poet of the ocean of sand
where sand particles are consumed
like fine grains of milk

Al- ARSHAD poet of dust
poet of the waterfalls of dust
poet of the expanding worlds which are swirling
over infinite space as  floating quarks of dust

Al -ARSHAD poet of the testaments
the Tall tambourine of the family of drums
the accursed poet, the black sheep,
a tarantula, who testified against the tentacles of time

AL – A  R  S H A D poet of mud;

they said you were there when God moulded mud to make man in the image of Man

they said you were there when God breathed into Man the immortal Breath of God

they said it was you who scribbled the destiny of Man on the bare Soul of Life

they said it was you who implanted the Fall in the Scroll of Life, as metaphor for twist of fate

they said you are Eve, or the aromatic curves of Eve

Some said you are the vituperative fangs of the Serpent

Some said No! You are the bushy valley of life, the forbidden fruit tucked between the mighty thighs of Eve

they said it was You who created mythos to distract Man from deciphering the original face of God hidden  behind palisades of clouds

they said it was You who carved out logos from the left ear of God

they said it was You who created the alphabet and encrypted it with metaphors

and when God said let there be light, You were there, as the Form of the photon,

the tiniest quark of dust

 and when God peeped into the void, You were there as the shadow of darkness

omnipresent in the nothingness of things

and when God said let the universe be, You were there as the big that banged, the bang

that bigged

and when God said let us shape the destiny of Man, You were there as the  pen and

the scroll, the scribbles and the scribe

A L – A R S H A D  poet of many colors

-  the purple mare of paradise
-  the chlorophyll in the garden of red
-  the red arakarabura
-  the yellow hissing flames of hell

A         L          -           A         R         S          H         A         D

 the many seasons of songs:

To the Angels
You are the Serpent, the venomous viper filled with bile

To Eve
You are the blessed rod, the pathway to endless bliss,
the  monstrous delicious member of Man

To Man
You are vinegar, the white water, crystal drops
the sacred elixir of lust

To Words
You are the emptiness between the letters,
the very gap separating E & O, V & L
to words, You are the neutrinos, the photons, protons of language,
the central atom of speech

To God
YOU ARE THE FORCE
always the FORCE
the pestle that stirred the cosmic soup
when God said LET’S MAKE LIFE

A         L          –           A

R

S

A

H

D             -           poet of dust

You are A L – A R S H A D poet of dust
the ? that begets question
the lofty permanence absent from the fields
the codex
the invisible secret
the custodians of codes?

al-arshad ? What is the meaning of A L – A R S H A D? :

ALIF:  The letter of sand, the invisible
time keeper of the cosmic clock

LAM:  The letter of Ram, the sacrificial shards of meat
blood and veins slain at the base of mount arafat,
the clinical tree which extends to heaven to strangulate the jugular of God

AYN:  The consonant of light, the eastern duck
that flaps the wings of emerald, the Butterfly,
the Unicorn, the nebula of the horse; the ancient
labor room of stars

RA:     dust. The consonant of dust. The brown gazelle gazing
at (mim) the island of frogs & the constellation of Ba

SIN:     Sack. The alphabet of the cordage. Strands. Web.
The stellar net, the escape point of earth, Saturn, Pluto & Mars
from the barricading sheets circling the dungeon of God

HA:     Heat. The letter of Heat.

Al HamZa :
The letter of light (at the very beginning),
the pointed beak of the paragon of birds,
the bright blackness of the black Madonna, the luminous bulbs
atop the forecastle of the Tall Ships of Sand

    Da:   t       h          e                      D         a          r           k

l       e          t           t           e          r

Da. The thick black bush of the intercrural valley
Da. The scent.             That scent.   Cunt.      Fuck.

AL – ARSHAD who witnessed the wedding
between  sky and God?
Angels? Satan? Black holes? The stars?

Al- ARSHAD -  poet of light where can we find the
rare ring of GOD?

is it on his thumb in the arch-horn of Leo
far in the seventy seventh realm?
is it on his magisterial seat in the black hole of miria
where the sacred sound: Om, Om, Om Om is being
continuously fertilized?

is it in the Circular Zone of Flames at the wormhole tak
or is it a string floating in cosmic  (un)consciousness or

is it lying flat on al-arsh, the inscrutable throne of God?

AL- ARSHAD did God impregnate the sky to give birth to the universe and dhuljoom?

AL-ARSHAD did the universe impregnate space to give birth to planets and stars?

AL-ARSHAD did the earth impregnate the ocean to give birth to Dinosaurs and Djinns?

AL-ARSHAD did the Dinosaurs impregnate dust to give birth to grass, the green gorilla,
genomes and genes?

AL-ARSHAD how did God impregnate the Sky
if Andromeda is the clean cleavage, and dhuljoom the navel &
milky way the intercrural valley, the garden of the thick black forest,
where the holy apple is grown?

AL-ARSHAD is it the original sin for the phallus to veer through
the intercrural valley, the thick black forest, to seek & taste
the holy apple of life?

*

AL-ARSHAD
how did God mate with Sky
is it with droplets of words, did he say BE and Sky CAME?

and when God said LET THERE BE LIGHT,
and there was light,  was that an affectionate smile
from a love struck couple longing for a kiss?

or did God use the Omniscient Force
the ungraspable power of thought?

AL-ARSHAD

To Vandals, inhabitants of Androgassos
You painted the face of God

To Zoks citizens of Kazok, the belt of rocks,
You can perceive the fluorescence of God

To Zelinians of ZHUL
You hold the key to the gallery of truth,
where the invisible portrait of God is kept

AL- ARSHAD

is God the big old man with silver beard smiling in the sky?

is God the Integer, the perfect number of Pythagoras and his ilk?

is God the invisible energy of Socrates & the unmoved mover of Plato?

is God the Lord of the Kaaba, and did he instruct the Bedouins to kill, to cast sacred
stones against his arch enemy iblis?

is God the solar disc of the Aztecs
the Osiris of Egypt &
the total Force of the old African sage?

AL-ARSHAD is God the One, the Oneness of the mystic,
the unity of oneness & the whirling dance of a dervish in a lodge?

A         L           -          A         R        S          H        A    D

——————————————————————–

The accompanying images are quite remarkable. They are the work of Algerian artist Sid El Houari, Wahran. You can find his work HERE.

Umar Abubakar Sidi lives in Lagos. “Testament of Sand” is part of a longer work being published by Saraba Magazine. Sidi also has a collection of poem titled “Striking the Strings” that will be released by Origami ( Parresia) sometime this year. 

The trip was a quick ten days spent mostly with family in London. Towards the end of our stay, my husband and I paired up with my sister and her husband on a short drive to the English countryside. We stopped at Stonehenge and then made our way to Cheddar Gorge to explore the dark cave—eerie and adorned with limestone.

All the while I was at Stonehenge, I kept thinking of V. S. Naipaul’s Enigma of Arrival set in Wiltshire, the same town where Stonehenge is located. As we travelled through the most spectacular landscapes—rolling hills covered with bright green grasses, cottages and stone fences, I realized that so much of my fantasies about the English countryside is tied to Naipaul’s deeply evocative semi-biographical work.

We were in Bath the following day to see the Roman baths when my husband and I stumbled upon Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights. An emporium—coined from the Greek word for market—is a place where a great many variety of things are sold. Mr. B’s Emporium is just such a place with a very fine collection of titles in fiction, psychology, philosophy, history, the classics and so on crammed in a small three-floor flat.

As I explored the shelves and made my way up the narrow staircases, I realized for the first time why independent book shops are cool. Stores like Waterstone and Barnes and Noble are warehouses. Indie book shops are curated collections. They source and collect books with the taste of seasoned book lovers in mind. They are driven by what Jorge Luis Borges calls “the ineffable leaps of taste,” which accounts for the daring randomness of their collections.

I made away with a few finds: Ian Sansom’s homage to the baffling world of paper titled Paper: An Elegy. I started reading it on the drive back to London and can say for certain that it is far too delightful a read to be an elegy. I bought Italo Calvino’s Why Read the Classics for myself and The Collector of Sand for a dear friend— both are collections of essays.

Enjoy the random bits of photographs that chronicle my travels. Look out for the photo of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. My husband and I attended the midnight mass in the stunningly beautiful church more as a tourist attraction than anything else. But we quickly realized that there was no way to remain indifferent in a space like that.

Despite the irreverence of our reason for attending, it soon became clear to us that St. Paul is one of those places that the German philosopher, Heidegger, describes as “solemn buildings that since time immemorial granted healing.” If you are a believer, you go there to be “cured of your suffering.” If you’re a non-believer, as we both were, you might “experience the suffering of the disappearing gods.” Either way, places like St. Paul does something to you.

Always a pleasure to find African authors.

Stonehenge. 2400 BC

Dusk at Custom House

Pretty holiday lights somewhere around Oxford Circle.

A small treat to get your Wednesday off to a fun start. Teju Cole posted this photo on Facebook of three men in police uniform holding his novel. Pretty badass. No?

This is not an essay. A few days ago, Kenyan novelist, Wainaina Binyavanga, tweeted a set of remarks he called “a brief scientific history of deamons.”  Aaron Bady of New Inquiry compiled and edited them into what you have here.

I can’t honestly say what this is. Really. You just have to read and make of it what you will. Looks like Binyavanga was possessed by Marechera’s spirit or something. The most I can say is that when storytelling tips over the edge of prophecy, you get this.

#BrazeYourself

So the deamon for homosexuality, is it French? Coz many Pentecostals say it is not African. Now, the deamon of homosexuality—I’m thinking it came on a ship, coz deamons must be hosted by a body. They just can’t arrive by teleporting. Bible Scientists who know the field very well have deeply researched ALL African knowledge and are sure Gay deamon DID indeed come from the West. Scientists and experts on Bible Africa are sure Homo deamon was imported. I’m not sure though whether by plane or ship. Container number? Homosexuality deamon could very well have arrived, not in a container (carrying Friesian bulls maybe?), it could have come with passengers. Homosexuality deamon must have sat around bored for a long long time occupying one or two people, until the internet arrived.

When the internet arrived, the homosexuality deamon went digital, and was able to climb into optic fibers. Homosexuality deamon learns fast. Full of trickery. Read a lot and decided to convert from simple analogue deamonhood, to an actual ideology. Homosexuality demon is by this time quite African, a middle class one, likes old colonial houses, comfy hotels, really likes imported things. Homosexuality deamon decided to occupy son of a pastor to a scholarship in the Netherlands where they ate cheese, wore clogs and smoked bang. While smoking bhang and at tenting philosophy they came up with a Homosexual ideology. They called it Gayism and Lesbianism. Homosexuality deamon and son of Pastor knew that Africans would never accept them unless they were imported and western. So they bought skinny jeans and balanced trousers.

Flight back to Nairobi (first class with NGO money), they were attacked overflying Sudan, by a chariot of male African homosexuality deamons. It was very traumatising – a bunch of Wolof speakers afro-deamons, some Azande, some refused to say. Two Kings. Shaka and Kabaka Mwanga. So. they were hijacked and taken to a hotel in Entebbe. They were taught many things, secret Baganda things, warrior-like Zulu things. Kabaka Mwanga said he really liked young boys, pages. He liked girls too. Actually he liked a feast of flesh.

So, deamon of Homosexuality (French mum, English dad) and Pastor’s Son were very well educated. Shaka, they learned was into pain: thorns, shot spear stabs, soulful war cries. He taught them geopolitics and how to shield their websites. Shaka was not into women. Hated lesbians. Kabaka mwanga hated white people, kept trying to poison Imported Homosexual deamon. He really hated Catholic priests. They killed his lovers. The things they did in the Cathedral!Over two weeks in Entebbe, they used social media to spread Afro-homosexualism everywhere with a few dutch techniques.

Meanwhile Museveni and Martin Ssempa really wanted to make some contacts with some crazy Bush type southern baptist ex- slave owning types. And so they had lunch with some Pentacostals who showed them the famous poo poo videos. Museveni was a soldier, and soldiers know what these things are about. man -man love has always been part of man-man war. But Ssempa was sssstunned. sweaty, hot, most and tender, angry. Sssso..that night King Shaka and Kabaka Mwanga visited him in his room and showed him the Cow Formation Sssstrategy – he has not recovered. Pastor’s son/Homsexual deamon built a cottage together in Azandeland where they took care of the four lost Kings who really caused mischief. Aaall over Africa. So, Homosexuality deamon taught pastor’s son that there are all kinds of deamons. Pentacostal bullshit deamons. Pentacostal kinda ok deamons.

And that is a brief scientific history of deamons via Pentecos-magination. Next week, in Pentacostal Bible Study, we will talk about evolution. And why Adam is shit scared of Eve.

The awesome image in the post is by Ivan Forde. See more Ivan’s work HERE.

Daniel Effiong’s psychological thriller, Crimson, has been shortlisted for the Afrinolly award. Effiong is part of a new generation of African filmmakers doing interesting things with the form. My first encounter with Effiong’s work is the dark comedy series, Goddammit It’s Monday. In Crimson, which he directs, he explores the mysterious world of police interrogation.

Crimson is a set of short films that capture the mystery surrounding certain events in Nigeria’s dark past. It’s an intense and beautiful exploration into the psychology of criminal interrogation. The episode shortlisted is the second of the three and is loosely based on Obasanjo’s phantom coup, an event that has long passed on into urban legend, but that Effiong reawakens in an eerily captivating 12 minutes of cinematic awesomeness.

Watch and please VOTE here.

A girl always wants things—things that aren’t necessarily limited to shoes and pretty dresses. In 2014, there are the things I want for African literature.

1. I want an African Fifty Shades of Grey: I’m thinking less about subject matter than about astronomical sales figures.  Don’t get me wrong, the idea of an African BDSM erotica is great. But all I’m asking for is an African novel that grips the imagination of Africans and the world so thoroughly that it sold 10 million copies in seven months. When will an African novel make that kind of staggering sales? I don’t care what the work is about. I don’t care if it’s pulp-trash or highbrow. I just need a work that would tear up amazon’s sales ranks—an African literary money-maker. I want a work that we would all love so much that we couldn’t get enough of it.

2. I want a writer’s conference in the scale of the legendary 1962 African Writers Conference held in Uganda’s Makarere University. 2013 was the year of book festivals. From Ake to Johannesburg, writers and readers congregated to celebrate African fiction. But a writers conference is something different. It would be a gathering of novelists, poets, bloggers, critics, academics, and artists. There would also be in attendance industry people, not limited to publishers and booksellers—I’m thinking technology, finance, real estate, media, Hollywood, and so on.  Let’s not forget cultural and political organizations, literary associations and collectives. The idea would be to get all these people talking, thinking, and fighting about African writing. The point of the conference would be to ask big, tough questions like: what is the place of African literature in an age of global capital? How can we re-energize literary research in African universities? What would it take to grow the African publishing industry? The question of archiving is also important. How can we stop the papers of our celebrated authors from being spirited away to universities in Europe and America? Book festivals are for cooing over celebrity novelists. At the conference, everyone would roll up their sleeves and ponder hard questions about the future of African writing.

3. I want more literary spats, beefs, fights, quarrel—I want all. One of the highlights for 2013 was the Adichie-Elnathan spat.  I have mad respect for Adichie. Whether she admits it or not, she inhabits the role of the African public intellectual. These days when everyone is going Zen and claiming to be identity-less, she’s made it part of her brand to always have something smart to say about Africa and writing. Elnathan John is an indispensable part of the online community. His writing as a blogger is brilliant, but he is also a thinker who, like Adichie, has thought-provoking things to say about everything, from literature to politics. When people like that quarrel, it gets the community going. The assembly of comments, insults, claims and counter claims, blogposts and tweets that trailed their little quarrel was epic. Well, it wasn’t, strictly speaking, a quarrel. Adichie never did reply Elnathan, but her fans did.

Disagreements like that give life to a community. Communities aren’t real until people disagree. It shows that there are stakes worth fighting for. It allows for a lively and generative exchange of ideas and forces people to make claims about where they stand on issues regarding the community.

4. I want Amos Tutuola’s genius to be known. Perhaps this has everything to do with the fact that I’ve just spent the last four months of my life writing a dissertation chapter on Tutuola’s work. We’ve come a long way from the days when people thought of Tutuola as a crazy, plagiarizing hack. But there are many today who claim to like Tutuola’s work but can’t help thinking of him as a literary charity case. Living in Tutuola-ville for so long has taught me that all roads in African fiction passes through Tutuola. Achebe may have invented the African novel, but Tutuola invented Achebe. If Achebe is the father of  modern African fiction, Tutuola is the god. In other words, you’ll never know the real Achebe until you encounter him via a detour through Tutuola. Tutuola is both my gospel and my prayer point for 2014. I plan to invoke his spirit with ever more fervor to bless my blog, my work, and my thinking on African fiction. I will be writing a whole lot about his life and his work this year. Hope you join me in the worship/conversation sessions.

The image is from Yasmin Tous’s Africa 80s project. See more of her work HERE.

After watching Crimson, I tried to figure out why it made such an impression on me. Each aspect of film that stayed with me was something I had never encountered in Nollywood. It dawned on my that what I loved about Crimson is that it broke all the Nollywood rules of filmmaking.

Take dialogue for example. The average film viewer can sense that film is a medium that tells story through images. This may seem surprising but dialogue is not where the heart of a good film lies. After all until the 1920s, silent films were the norm. Viewers were quite content to sit through an hour of muted gestures. Filmmaking is about relying images and sound to tell a story, an essential part of which was expressing emotion and inner psychological state. A character does not have to tell us that they are sad. A combination of lighting, set design, the way the scene is shot, and of course the acting conveys the inner states of mind of a character. Dialogue is like the cherry on top. It adds to the cake’s perfection but it is not where the true beauty lies. Of course Nollywood has doggedly refused to come to terms with this very basic idea of how filmmaking works.

Crimson is different. Daniel Effiong knows he has a set of delicate story on his hands. The third episode is loosely based on one of the SSS interrogations that took place shortly before Dele Giwa’s assassination. Effiong could have gone the Nollywood route and made it all dramatic—shouting, beating, crying, bulging eyes, growling and so on. It is to Effiong’s credit, that Inspector Akin, played by the wickedly seductive Seun Ajayi, never once touches Giwa. As Effiong sees it, power asserts itself in different forms. He wanted to explore that kind of power that one man could have over another man’s mind—the power of the interrogator.

An interrogation is a psychological affair. It is a mind game. Akin’s objective is to get Giwa to stop writing bad things about the government. But Akin is not a crude thug. He knows that to bend the will of a man like Giwa takes a peculiar kind of violence. Giwa has the assurance of morality on his side. He thinks that in outing the government, he is not only standing on the side of truth and justice but also saving a beloved country. Akin knows all this. Akin also knows that there is a part of Giwa that is scared shitless. Treason is not a soft crime. Death by hanging is the logical outcome. Besides, every man has his price in the sense that every man has this one possession—a child, a loved one, a lifestyle, etc.— that they will not loose for anything in the world.

Crimson is not story packed full of drama. It is an exploration into the psychology of interrogation. As a viewer, you enjoy the thrill—not without feeling guilty—of watching Akin break Giwa’s resolve. Effiong is saying that a man can do more damage breaking people’s conviction than breaking their bones. A film like this cannot depend solely on dialogue. If the goal is to externalize deep psychological insecurities and manipulation, something more than dialogue is needed. The truth is that the deepest, darkest feelings are the least translatable into words. So what does Effiong do? He returns to the basics of filmmaking and lets images and sound translate the bulk of these emotions.

Akin sits down, he removes his cuff links and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt. The white of his shirt is gleaming and almost blinding against the pitch black of the room. Dele Giwa is wearing an adire buba. The film is shot in black and white so we can’t see the colors in his adire, but the patterned fabric and casual feel of the buba attire contrasts the impersonal and clinical whiteness of Akin’s shirt, making Akin into this abstract figure of power. The interrogation cell is sparsely furnished with two chairs, a table and a crude light fixture hanging over.

Against this eerie exterior, the film of sweat and oil on giwa’s face speaks volume about the fear and dread that lurks inside him. He responds to Akin’s pleasantries—“Hello Dele”—with silence. Who won’t be suspicious of Akin’s feigned courtesy. As Akin gets himself settled in his sit, he reels off matter-of-fact, “I regret any inconveniences. This is just routine, and I don’t expected that we’ll be long.” But we are not really listening because something is happing with the images. We are alternating between Akin rolling up his sleeves and Dele looking lost and confused. In between are these sudden interruptions with black screen. There is a slightly prolonged black screen that comes to an end when Akin says Okay. We are greeted with a shot from above that show both men seated at the table with the light fixture above their heads. It’s the first time since the film began that we are seeing both men together in one shot. Up till now, we’ve has do make do with fragment. A face here, a hand there, interrupted by black screens. This adds to our unease. With faces intermittently flashing before our eyes, we get this unsettling feeling of not being in control, a feeling that is enhanced by the darkness that envelopes the room as though its hiding something from us. When we feel sad for Giwa or creeped out by Akin, we are responding to the music and the cinematic arrangement of shots and frames and angles not necessarily to what they are saying. In other words, the entire twelve minutes could have passed without spoken word and we’ll still be affected the film, we’d still see Giwa’s mounting frustration, his bad attempt at bluffing, we’d still sense Akin’s demonic intensity.

The surprising thing is that a film that begins by telling its story by sound and images hardly ever goes wrong with dialogue. The dialogue sits somewhere between witty and poetic. Short retorts that are packed full with meaning convey much of the intensity both men feel. My favorite moment is when Akin creates an opposition between the poet and the journalist. He tells Dele that instead of writing mean things about the government, he should write poems. As though poems were less political, less risky. Dele spits out a few lines of an imaginary poem he’s titled “Ink Blood and Piss.” And even though Akin burst out in laud guffaws, his laughter is slightly uneasy. And the idea is that poems do not put an end to the writing of the journalist. Both forms of writing are implicated in the service of truth.

Pointing to the folder, Akin says: “Dele, I’ll be straight with you. You see this? It doesn’t look good.” The folder, as Akin remarks later, contains all of Giwa’s “can of worms” — the meetings with foreign nationals in a bid to overthrow the government, Giwa’s secret love child, and so on.  Akin is a master interrogator. He plays the little he knows against Giwa’s assumption that Akin knows everything. The manila folder lying on the table between Giwa and Akin is the symbol of Akin’s claim or pretention knowledge. Every interrogator has a God complex often expressed by claims to knowing everything about the victim. In all three episodes in the series, there is always a point at which Akin suggests that he is omniscient and suggests that he is greater than state power he serves.

Akin’s

Most of what the Average Nigerian knows about Dele Giwa’s death, for instance, is more fiction than fact. Crimson plays on this and uses a great deal of creative license to create a set of deeply unsettling footages that evokes all that was weird about military rule.

Crimson is a psychological thriller that keeps you spell bound for an intense 12 minutes. You get to imagine what it may have been like for someone like Dele Giwa or Obasanjo to sit in the interrogation chamber, knowing that he was being charged for treason, a crime that meant death by hanging. You get full access into the dark interrogation cell, sparsely furnished with two chairs, a table and a crude light fixture hanging over. And then the magic begins. You see Inspector Akin at work, the master interrogator, as he uses all kinds of mind play in his bag of tricks to get his victim to confess to a crime they may or may not have committed.

You get to imagine what it may have been like for someone like Obasanjo to sit in the interrogation chamber, knowing that he was being charged for treason, a crime that meant death by hanging. You get a peek into the dark interrogation cell, sparsely furnished with two chairs, a table and a crude light fixture hanging over. And then the magic begins. You see Inspector Akin, played by Seun Ajayi, at work. The master interrogator, Akin has an inexhaustible repertoire of mind games, treats, threats that gets his victims to confess to crimes they may or may not have committed.

Biyi Bandele, who directed the Half of a Yellow Sun film adaptation, shared the wonderful news on Facebook today. If Deadline Hollywood is to be believed, Monterey Media Inc. has secured the rights for the film.

We are looking at an early summer release of the much anticipated film. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton, Half of a Yellow Sun premiered in Toronto at the TIFF last year and is finally set for a theatrical release.

I’m quite pleased. Actually more than pleased. I’m elated! Here’s the statement made by Deadline Hollywood:

Monterey Media has secured rights to Half Of A Yellow Sun, co-starring Golden Globes-nominated12 Years a Slave thesp Chiwetel Ejiofor. Half of a Yellow Sun is based on the novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and features Ejiofor as a revolutionary who falls in love with Olanna (Thandie Newton), one of two sisters whose stories unfold against the backdrop of the Nigerian-Biafran War. Anika Noni Rose also stars in the drama directed by Biyi Bandele. Half of a Yellow Sun is produced by Shareman Media and BFI in association with Metro International Entertainment and Kachifo Limited in association with Lip Sync Productions LLP and A Slate Films. Metro International’s Natalie Brenner and monterey’s Scott Mansfield negotiated the deal. The film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, will open theatrically in early Summer. Read More

To keep your appetite wetted and ready for the summer, here is the trailer. Enjoy!

Homosexuality is now illegal in Nigeria. The president signed it into law a few days ago. So yes, Ayodele Oyebanji’s story is timely and shocking because it is about the lynching of a gay man. Those are reasons enough to read the story, but there’s more.

Oyebanji makes the reader think about not just the horror of killing a man because of who he loves but the ease of it—how easy it is for everyday, law abiding Nigerians to turn murderers. We saw it in the ALUU 4 mob killing. Should we be worried, as Linda Ikeji suggests, that this new law would encourage violence against homosexuals?  

Oyebanji’s use of the second person is both beautiful and unsettling, the way it implicates the reader and forces You to imagine for a moment that you were the one lying on the ground waiting for your death. 

Read and reflect! 

The breeze that afternoon was not cool. As expected of a harmattan breeze, it lapped all that came its way. Everything was dust-caked. Including you. The brown and dryness of the weather was all you wore, your manhood pointing its limp head at the ground. You had rolled in the dust for so long. For too long. You had been made to do that. You were an actor and they, the people around you, the directors. Anybody just arriving at the scene would think like that. They would think the bulk of irate people around you were pipers who sang you tunes to dance to. You knew what you had suffered was too much for an actor to bear in a sane enactment. Perhaps, it was an insane one. A real, but insane enactment.

You lifted your face to look at the crowd. Your wife, Bola, was part of it, her eyes red like mud. Those almond eyes you had told her you could die for poured out water. Yours didn’t. Blood cascaded from them like tears had, on the day you went in the middle of a woman’s legs, for the first time. The tears were not those of pleasure as your wife must have thought. They were neither for her clean sheet; the hymen you broke through.You wept because there in her, you buried more than your seeds. You buried a chunk of your freedom. A large chunk of you. The society wanted it that way.

The mob’s beating would not cease. Yes, a whole society was beating you, calling you names. You bled all over as your flesh tore, like it had no substance. No worth. Like tissue. Like a rag.  The harmattan sun sure had its fill. It guzzled your body fluids with alacrity. You sank again in the dust. You had been drained of strength.Yet, they wanted you to rise. To walk naked around town. You were a deterrent.

You were to serve as a deterrent. For what God made you? This God must be far from what your pastor preached every Sunday. You would not set your feet in any church again if you got out of your trouble alive, you thought. You knew it was all your trouble, not that of the mob. You knew that you wouldn’t get out of it. You knew other things.

You knew your partner was lucky to have escaped. John had torn himself from the crowd and ran into the bush by a streak of luck. He couldn’t have, with the population around you now. You didn’t feel betrayed; you loved him still. Each moment you shared was worth a repeat. The times he winced when you tugged at the hairs on his chest.  The times he stroked your erect penis as he guided it into his mouth. You lived for him. You would also die for him. For your love. You knew he would find another partner if you were killed. Your wife too would get someone else to father your child.

You remained on the ground, life seeping out of your body. Whoever had informed the people around you of what went on in the office toilet was around. He was a co-worker. You knew. You knew guilt would eat away at his heart as he watched you doused with petrol, a tyre around your neck. You needed death to come in time. You called. Fire answered, on your head.

Post image is by Alexander Ikhide. Ikhide is Nigerian and based in Bristol, UK. See more of his artwork HERE. 

***

Oyebanji Ayodele is a final year student of Literature-in-English at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. Currently a contributor at GreenBiro, he blogs at ayoyebanji.blogspot.com. 

Follow him on twitter: @ayoyebanji.

I remember “fighting” with Chika Unigwe on twitter over the merits of being a makeup girl versus a shoe-loving girl. She said something about making up being laborious and shoes being such divine things.

To cut long story short, I lost the battle. I would later find out that, in addition to being a brilliant novelist, Chika is famous for her to-die-for shoe collection.

Chimamanda, it appears, is on #TeamMakeup…just like me. She suggests as much in an interview posted on Thandie Newton’s beauty and fashion blog called Thandiekay. An amazing project, by the way—a collaboration with make up artist Kay Montano.

The British-Zimbabwean actress and Chimamanda know each other from the Half of a Yellow Sun film project. In the interview Chimamanda shares her thoughts on beauty, cosmetics, and what she finds delightful about making up.

Scroll down and start reading. 

You’re probably wondering: what does this have to do with literature?

My answer: don’t be an unimaginative boor!  Lol. Enjoy!

1. What is your earliest make-up memory?

Six years old, at my mother’s wonderfully cluttered dressing table in Nsukka, trying on her very sticky lip gloss.

2. I feel most beautiful when…

I am in a good mood; I am fit and exercising regularly; I am wearing stable high heels; I have managed to do a flawless ‘cat-eye.’

3. When you were a child, what was your Mother’s beauty routine?

She moisturized her entire body very diligently. Ashy skin was unacceptable. I remember watching her after her bath, how she would reach across her shoulder, hand coated in cream, to get as much of her back as she could. She liked perfumes. There were heady scents in her bedroom. I remember the green POISON, the fawn CHLOE. She wore perfume to sleep. There was nail polish, powder compacts, eye pencils. She always wore tasteful makeup. My mother is one of the most beautiful people I know, and I thought so even as a child.

4. Is make-up a chore or a delight?

It’s become an absolute delight. I was once interested only in the most minimal makeup – colorless mascara, that sort of thing – but became more interested in make-up when I started using it to try and look a little older. I was so tired of being told I looked like a child. Now, I like to try new things, and I like the temporary transformation that make-up can bring.

5. Did your father refer to your Mother’s beauty, and how?

Yes. “Nekene nne unu,” he would say – “look at your mother!’ – when my mother was all dressed for church on Sunday mornings, sequinned george wrapper on her waist, a sparkly blouse, a beautifully-structured gele on her head. She knew he thought she was beautiful, you could tell.

6. What’s been your worst beauty mishap?

I once decided I wanted a funky afro. So I colored my hair in my bathroom, with three different color kits because the first two didn’t quite show. The result was orange hair. But what brought despair was how dry and brittle my hair became.

7. If you could give one beauty gift what would it be?

A good facial moisturiser.

8. Where’s the craziest place you’ve done your make-up?

In a narrow train toilet, although that was less crazy and more uncomfortable.

9. What would you like to see more of in the beauty industry?

A greater range of colors (and undertones) in foundations and tinted moisturisers. A greater awareness that dark-skinned women have enormous buying power and are as much interested in beauty as anyone else.

10. When was the last time your mascara ran, and why?

Some years ago in my hometown. It was very hot, I’d been outside for a while, and suddenly felt a gooey heaviness around my eyes.

 —Do visit thandiekay.com. It’s divinely inspirational.

 Photo from Taiye Selasi’s Instagram—collection of the most striking photography. 

INTELLECTUAL PROSTITUTION:  

“Wa Thiong’o, intellectual prostitution is marketable for Kenyans, but at what cost? You used to preach socialism. Have you changed and started preaching and practicing real capitalism? What can Kenyans give you in order to for you to come home and help them bury the corpse of their misery? Do you know how much inspiration you would instill in young people by interacting with them face to face? Surely, Africans need you much more than Americans do. You are an invaluable elder who should be reachable always for consultation.Drop money addiction for a noble course; the more money you make, the more you want to make.If we can’t have a job for you, come and make use of your creativity to set up something which will institutionalize your name.”

“You left the country to live, work and give weight to capitalism, the ideology you had been fighting fiercely against in Kenya. Knowing your value, the capitalist intelligence received you with open arms.”

“I have to refer to a particular meeting I had with you during a writers’ conference in Stockholm, Sweden, where you breathed fire into white people’s ears with regard to the dictatorship and inhumanity of the Kenyan government. I took you aside to a corner and asked you: “Why do you tell these white people such things about your mother country when you know too well that even if the white people were murderers they would keep silent about it to outsiders?” You answered: “I have the right to speak up my mind about the evils taking place in my country.” I asked you: “Speak your mind to whom?” You replied by shrugging your shoulders and ended the conversation. Mwana wa mutumia, remember Wole Soyinka as one of the speakers at the conference? His powerful voice spoke defensively about Nigeria and expressed how he had missed the Nobel Prize by an inch. When outside their country, the protective Nigerians always give you the impression that their country (kontry) is the best in Africa.”

 There was a man who had three wives, these three wives loved him so much that they were following him to wherever he wanted to go, and the husband loved them as well. One day, this man was going to another town which was very far away, and his three wives followed him. But as they were traveling from bush to bush, this man stumbled over, he fell down unexpectedly and died at once.

As these three wives loved him, the one who was the senior wife said that she must die with their husband so she died with him. Now there remained the second to the senior and the last one or third of the wives. Then the second to the senior who had died with their husband, said that she knew a ‘Wizard’ who was living in that area, and his work was to wake deads, she said that she would go and call him to come and wake their husband with the senior wife; then the third wife said that she would be watching both dead-bodies so that wild animals might not eat them before the Wizard would come. So she waited watching the dead-bodies before the arrival of the second wife with the Wizard. But before an hour, the second wife returned with the Wizard and he woke up their husband with the senior wife who died with their husband.

After the husband woke up, he thanked the Wizard greatly and asked how much he would take for the wonderful work which he had done, but the Wizard said that he did not want money, but would be very much grateful if he (husband) could give him (Wizard) one of his three wives. When the husband heard that from the Wizard, he chose the senior wife who died with him for the Wizard but she (senior wife) refused totally; after that, he offered the second wife (who went and called the Wizard who woke the husband and senior wife up) to the Wizard, but she refused as well, then he chose the third wife who was watching the dead bodies of their husband and senior wife and she refused too.

But when their husband saw that none of his wives wanted to follow the Wizard, then he told the Wizard to take the whole of them, so when the three wives heard so from their husband, they were fighting among themselves; unluckily, a police-man was passing by that time and he arrested them and charged them to the court. So the whole people in the court wanted me to choose one of the wives who was essential for the Wizard.

But I could not choose any of these wives to the Wizard yet, because everyone of them showed her part of love to their husband in that the senior wife died with their husband, the second wife went and called the Wizard who woke the husband and senior wife and the third protected the dead bodies from the wild-animals till the second wife brought the Wizard.

— From The Palmwine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

Well, what do you think?

Image is by the endlessly talented Mickalene Thomas. Love her work! Check out more of her stuff {HERE}

Okey Ndibe at the Book Expo America in New York

The gods in Okey Ndibe’s second novel, Foreign Gods Inc., are playthings for the rich and the famous. They undergo the indignity of being stolen or exiled and then bought and sold like common articles of trade. Even Nietzsche, for whom gods were disposal beings, would have been scandalized by the idea of gods turned commodity. He would have felt a bit queasy at the thought of high-end “god shops” in bustling American cities where Hollywood stars and “titans of the corporate world” paid four hundred thousand dollars for a deity without flinching.

Foreign Gods Inc. is a thrilling account of divinity in the age of global capital. The novel recounts Ike’s ill-conceived plan to steal Ngene—the patron god of his village. He hopes to sell the deity to a New York City businessman dealing in gods sourced from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Ike discovers Mark Gruels’ strange world of god collecting in a magazine.  Gruels’ Foreign Gods Incorporated is “the world’s oldest god shop.” At first, the idea of buying “deities torn away from their shrines in remote corners of the world” fills Ike with disgust. But the crushing weight of piling credit card debt and a gambling problem transforms disgust into fascination. Soon after we meet Ike, he is on a flight bound for his home town in Nigeria to raid his uncle’s shrine. In a world where life is increasingly exposed to the tyranny of an exploitative financial order, people are forced to seek out ever more “creative” ways of getting by. For Ike, it is stealing and selling a deity.

Ndibe and BBC Africa’s Peter Okwoche

With matters pertaining to gods, the stakes are always high. Back at home in the small town of Utonki, Ike finds that he is not the only one who has designs on Ngene. Pastor Uka, the fire-breathing demagogue of an upstart Pentecostal church, is on a mission to destroy the deity. The objectives of both men may appear different, but they share a desire to subject the deity to some form of violence—Ike to uproot it from its native environment, Pastor Uka to put an end to its allegedly demonic influence on the lives of the people.

But as Ndibe shows with such dazzling intelligence, the desire to destroy gods is as old as time. In fact, to be a god is to live in a perpetual state of war against other gods, their self-appointed emissaries, and against the forces of history. Nested within the main narrative thread of Foreign Gods Inc. is another story that recalls a time, perhaps a century before. In the uncertain days of colonial expansion, Ngene fought the Christian God, suited in all its colonial illusions of grandeur, and won. This story within a story is also the account of the cocky and temperamental Mr. Stanton—a trailblazing missionary—who arrives in Utonki set on a war path to undo the powers of Ngene. Thankfully, Stanton is nothing like the gracious and reasonable Mr. Brown in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Ndibe spices up the colonial-encounter motif by giving us Mr. Stanton—a depressive with serious anger issues and a slight case of mental instability.

I found myself returning to Stanton’s story, utterly captivated. Written in italics, it takes up only 27 pages of the entire 332. But it leaves a lingering taste that affects the reader’s sense of things as the story progresses. It’s as if the entire novel moves in the ghostly shadows of that brief digression. Stanton’s story also interrupts the novel’s narrative flow with a lyricism that suspends the largely realist composition of the novel. Ndibe’s writing is at its most alluring when he chronicles Stanton’s descent into madness and the somewhat magical decomposition of his physical body, the stench of which Stanton himself is unable to stand.

Ndibe and Chika Unigwe (author of Night Dancer) at a book signing in Atlanta

Foreign Gods Inc. will remind you of Achebe’s work. Ndibe borrows the culture-contact motif that structures Achebe’s trilogy. References to gods, missionaries, shrines, and high priests evoke the now familiar language often used to tell the story of colonial encounters, popularized by Achebe. But the differences between the two authors are far more significant. In reading Ndibe’s novel, it occurred to me that Achebe’s trilogy is really three different ways of telling the same story of an African modernity founded on the carcass of vanquished gods. While Ndibe’s story is not necessarily one of triumph, it is about survival. He is asking: in what form do these gods—and the worlds they once animated—survive? How have they continued to haunt Africa’s contemporary moment and insist on addressing and being addressed by the future?

2014 is going to be a big year for African novels. The first quarter of the year alone will see the publication of several highly anticipated works: Adhiambo Owuor’s Dust, Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Birds, Chris Abani’s Secret History of Las Vegas, and Teju Cole’s Everyday for the Thief. No doubt, it will be a tough job for these authors as they try holding the attention of readers and the literary market. Notwithstanding the competition, Okey Ndibe is bound to set himself apart from the pack. Who doesn’t want to read a novel about a god heist?

***

Order your copy from Amazon {HERE}

Curious about what others think of Ndibe’s novel? See more reviews:

Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc.— Of Moral Absolutism and Fallen Gods by Ikhide Ikheloa

Trying to Filch the Blessings of the Idol Rich by Janet Maslin for the New York Times

Images via Okey Ndibe’s Facebook page

Really sad story. The Shinning Girls is a gripping thriller about a time traveling serial killer who slit the guts open of his female victims. I read the novel last summer, and it certainly was tough to get through the details of these murders. The South African novelist said all along that she purposely played up the violence in the novel to get attention around the way women’s bodies have continued to be objects of violence.

I came across this piece published on Books Live where Beukes tells the story of a shocking tragedy involving a female friend of hers and how this informed her decision to make violence against women take a significant place in the story.

Scroll and read.

Something Beukes created will writing The Shinning Girls. It’s called the “Murder Wall.”—it helped her keep track of things.

In September, Sonwabo “allegedly” assaulted Thomokazie. He poured boiling water over her, stabbed her in the buttocks and then locked her in his shack and walked away. She was a hostage there for five days until the neighbours were alerted by the moaning and the terrible smell and called the police. They broke down the door and summoned an ambulance. She had third degree burns. They were infected. There were flies thick on her wounds. She was half mad from pain and too traumatised by her ordeal to make a statement at first. That only happened a week later.

What the police failed to do was take a statement from anyone other than Thomokazie. Not the neighbours who had called them, not the friends who saw Sonwabo grab Thomokazie by the arm and drag her away to his shack five days prior. Not the paramedics who arrived on the scene.

They also failed to let the family know that Sonwabo had been released with a “warning.”

They failed to communicate with the family at all, to let them know how the case was proceeding (not at all) or what their rights were (apparently none) to the extent that when Violet found Sonwabo skulking around the house, hiding under Thomokazie’s window, the family didn’t know they could call the cops to report him for threatening behaviour.

Four months later, Thomokazie died of “natural causes” according to the death certificate issued by Somerset Hospital. She died in the waiting room. She was 23 and had been in and out of hospital and clinics repeatedly since the assault. She was barely able to walk, barely able to get out of bed. More than once, her mother, Gertie, had to pay R600 to rush her to a clinic at 4am in the morning because she was in such terrible pain. Gertie is a domestic worker (she’s been working for my family for eight years once a week). She earns maybe R2400 a month.

(When Thomo died just before Christmas, I put out a call to help raise money to pay for the funeral. Friends in real life and on Twitter and Facebook and total strangers came together to raise R10 000 in 24 hours.)

The police did not follow up to get the medical records.

We were informed of all this on Friday morning, the day of the trial, by a sympathetic and very, very pissed off prosecutor. He said he had no choice but to strike the case off the roll. He wasn’t even going to try to prosecute because the cops had botched the investigation (my description). He said “botched” wasn’t the right word, because that would imply there was any investigation at all. He wrote a furious two page report for the police docket pointing out all the holes in the investigation. “Holes” is the wrong word too. A blank page doesn’t have holes.

The only evidence in the docket was Thomokazie’s statement. The word of a dead girl. Sonwabo could say anything in court. Anything at all and get away with it. She poured the boiling water on herself. She was coming at him with the boiling water and he pushed her. He wasn’t there at all. It was some other abusive boyfriend who had a history of assaulting her who just happened to be in his house at the time.

Better to drop the case than try to go to trial and have him acquitted and have double jeopardy come into play where we could never charge him for this again.

I was devastated. The fucker tortured and murdered a 23 year old girl and now he was going to get away with it?

“It’s not over,” the prosecutor explained. He gave us the phone number for the Gugulethu police station commander, the police commissioner, he suggested I email Helen Zille, Lennit Max, force them to “re-open” a case that had never really been opened in the first place. Get enough evidence and we could charge Sonwabo properly.

I started rallying forces, talking to my brother-in-laws, who are, respectively, the head of the etv news channel and a police reservist and advocate. Sarah Lotz’s advocate husband offered to help. I sent an email to Third Degree, asked Violet and Gertie to make a full list of anyone who might be a useful witness, the full details of every hospital stay, every middle-of-the-night emergency room visit, to try and recall Sonwabo’s previous assaults, the approximate dates of when they’d seen Thomokazie with bruises or cuts or hair pulled out of her scalp over the three years she’d been dating him (she never laid a charge, of course, victims of psychological and physical abuse too often don’t), the details of his previous rumoured eight year prison sentence.

This morning, Gertie phoned me. The family can’t bear to go on. It’s been too much for them already. Re-opening the case means re-opening their pain. They want to let it go, move on with their lives.

On Friday, Violet and I saw Sonwabo in the corridor of Athlone Magistrate’s Court. His new girlfriend walked obediently two steps behind him like a faithful dog as he swaggered out of the court. She was probably 19.

I have to find a way to let go too.

From Books Live

Books Live is a prominent African literary hub. Check them out. {HERE}

Less than a year after her critically acclaimed novel, Ghana Must Go, hit the stands, the Afropolitan author seems to be gearing herself for round two.

In a Facebook post titled, “Regarding second novels,” Selasi shared this photo and quote about fighting writer’s block.

One reason that people have artist’s block is that they do not respect the law of dormancy in nature. Trees don’t produce fruit all year long, constantly. They have a point where they go dormant. And when you are in a dormant period creatively, if you can arrange your life to do the technical tasks that don’t take creativity, you are essentially preparing for the spring when it will all blossom again.
~Marshall Vandruff
Art by Paweł Jońca