Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Listen, two stars is maybe a little harsh, but this is the type of tame literature that doesn't hurt no one: It unLonglisted for the Booker Prize 2023 Listen, two stars is maybe a little harsh, but this is the type of tame literature that doesn't hurt no one: It unfolds exactly as to be expected, the characters are well-known clichés, and readers can nod their heads and feel like they are on the right side of things as they bemoan the social ills depicted here without any nuance and without elements that counter-act or disturb basic convictions. It's convenient literature, intellectually lazy, drawn out, aesthetically conservative. God knows why this gets a Booker nod.
The plot follows two families: Wúràolá is a doctor, but thanks to patriarchy, she is also expected to be an obedient wife and mother - she marries an old family friend who abuses her. In the second narrative strand, 16-year-old Eniolá has to beg in the streets in order to pay his school fees after his father loses his job, which in the long run makes him vulnerable to become complicit in the very structures that work to his detriment, because he has to survive. Of course, the ways if these two characters cross.
So we have two people striving for an education, a man and a woman, one wealthy, one poor, and these societal and familial positions are juxtaposed plus the connections are shown, especially in the political realm: Wúràolá's father-in-law runs for governorship, and Eniolá also gets caught up in politics. The novel clearly tells us what to think about the situations presented, which is pretty annoying, as the moral is so obvious in the plot itself. Actually, it would be more fun if this was crafted as outrage literature, but for that, it would have to be more angry, more, well, outrageous, unruly, powerful. All that it is not.
This is a novel that sticks to the well known rules of conventional storytelling while criticizing the unjust rules of Nigerian society. I wish the book would take more risks and go for a harder impact to bring its (very worthwile!) points across....more
Great in its clarity and calm argumentative tone - good luck contradicting this, misogynists! The book is rendered as a letter to the author's friend Great in its clarity and calm argumentative tone - good luck contradicting this, misogynists! The book is rendered as a letter to the author's friend who asked her how to raise her baby daughter as a feminist. While Adichie is a Nigerian feminist writer, the issues discussed are of global relevance and easy to grasp while always starting from the point that if you want to raise a child feminist, you need to be a feminist example first. It's true that the text does not equally ponder the LGBTQ+ experience, but the text itself addresses it, stating that the author can simply better speak to heterosexual relationships due to her own experience (which means that she "only" shares her experiences as a Black African woman - is this generally underrepresented perspective really not enough for some people?).
Fun fact: I was inspired to finally listen to the audiobook due to the new Lady Dior 95.22 campaign, which stars Adichie - and I love how an international luxury brand throws money at a serious feminist writer while the serious writer correctly underlines that feminism and femininity go very well together: https://en.vogue.me/fashion/chimamand... (my only complaint is that I need the bag in sage which isn't available yet)...more
English original: The Baby is Mine Ta-dah: The first pandemic chamber play is here, and it's a novella by the literary shooting star who wrote My SisteEnglish original: The Baby is Mine Ta-dah: The first pandemic chamber play is here, and it's a novella by the literary shooting star who wrote My Sister, the Serial Killer. We hear the story from the perspective of Bambi, a Nigerian casanova who gets kicked out by his girlfriend and seeks shelter in his aunt's house. The widow has just lost her husband to COVID, but Bambi is surprised to find his late uncle's young lover living in the house as well, with both women claiming that they're the mother of his nephew, a newborn baby - who is telling the truth? And why does Bambi know his uncle's secret mistress?
Four people confined to closed quarters during a lockdown and playing psychological games that refer to gender roles and stereotypes - that's basically the set-up of the novel. Bambi is a great character because he is so flawed and believable; frequently, he frames the women in a way that shows that he has internalized societal beliefs about the roles and intentions of females. The women, on the other hand, often try to play into his male assumptions, aiming to play prejudice in their favor and to discredit their counterpart.
This is no major work or literary masterpiece, but it is a fun, smart novella from a young Nigerian talent, and I hope that Braithwaite will soon offer us another novel.
You can listen to the podcast gang dissect the text here (in German). ...more
Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020 In this novel, Irish writer Edna O'Brien tells the story of Maryam, a young schoolgirl who is abducteNominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020 In this novel, Irish writer Edna O'Brien tells the story of Maryam, a young schoolgirl who is abducted by fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, tortured, raped and forced into marriage - of course, the story is based on the experiences of the 276 Nigerian schoolgirls who were abducted by Boko Haram six years ago. The great achievement of the text is that the author finds a relentless tone that forces the reader to confront the atrocities these young women had to endure, but without making the text sound like conveying misery is the only point: The victims and survivors are strong and dignified characters facing overwhelming fanatism and brutality. This book is not exploitative.
Which brings us straight to the question whether 89-year-old white woman O'Brien is the right author to tell the story of an African schoolgirl, and the answer is yes. She is a fiction writer, she can write about whatever she wants as long as she does not distort her subject matter or exploit the people / culture she portrays, and it seems like it is very hard to argue that that's what she did with "Girl". This book is extremely well written and tells an important story.
My problem with the text was of a different nature: Why emulate great journalism in a novel if you can have actual great journalism instead? O'Brien did travel to Nigeria and talked to many of the girls who were abducted, she really did her research and it shows. But why then package it in a novel that reads like a reportage? I love both fiction and (especially political) non-fiction, and a novel needs to deliver something that journalism can't in order to justify its format. In the case of "Girl", I frequently wondered how the author distilled the story of Maryam from the actual stories of the schoolgirls - I'd have preferred to hear the real accounts and not the fictional amalgamation of a real account.
So all in all, O'Brien certainly is a superb writer, but I'd rather have enjoyed her talent, empathy and intelligence in a non-fictional text about her time in Nigeria and her conversations with the survivors. In case you're interested in the real stories, there are fortunately multiple reports about it on the internet, e.g. on the website of The New York Times.
With their new book, Emezi has written an emotional drama, a work of social criticism, and a very effective suspense novel that revolves around an actWith their new book, Emezi has written an emotional drama, a work of social criticism, and a very effective suspense novel that revolves around an actual death, but also around another mystery: The dynamic of human relationships, in all their flawed glory. Growing up in Aba, Vivek Oji is the beloved son of a Nigerian father and an immigrant mother from India, and as we learn from both the title of the book and the first sentence, the young man dies - but how and why? This question drives the narrative, and the author does a fantastic job keeping readers on the edge of their seats.
Told in alternating chapters by an omniscient narrator, Vivek's cousin Osita and Vivek himself, we learn that Vivek was born wih a mark on his foot that looks exactly like the scar of his grandmother who died the day he came into the world. Also, he is tormented by an enigmatic "illness" which drives him into a deep depression - as it turns out, Vivek is queer and gendervariant and doesn't know how to live his truth (I'm not using "they" as a pronoun at this point - the book will tell you why!). Also, Vivek feels a strong, mystical connection to his deceased grandmother.
Emezi shows how the people around him struggle with Vivek's timid attempts to show and speak himself, including his feminine side. The novel shines when the author writes about the complicated relationships between friends and family, their love, their friendship and their sexual relationships, straight and queer. These characterizations and dynamics are extremely well drawn and render the novel more accessible than the more abstract Freshwater - the people we encounter frequently have strong emotional plasticity and experience both failure and growth, which makes it exciting to follow their journeys.
The concept of "otherness" is also explored in the form of the Nigerwives, foreign women who are married to Nigerian men. Quite a few of them feature in the text and their stories illustrate the challenges they are facing in their roles as immigrant wives. The author themselves was not only raised in Aba, they are also half-Tamil, a "half-caste" (which is the term used in the novel), like Vivek and many of his friends. Another group that is othered and thus excluded are the Northerners who have different clothes and customs than the people living in the South of the country where Aba is located - Emezi is especially hinting at the conflicts between Hausa and Igbo. In this context, Emezi shows the barbarity of "necklacing", a lynching method where a petrol-filled rubber tyre is put around a victim and set on fire, and in another instance, they describe the practice of religious exorcisms, which seems to be a problem in Nigeria.
This is a great novel, both full of heart and a real pageturner. "Why are you so afraid? Because something is different from what you know?", Vivek asks at one point - but there are some people who know what he needs: 'They barely understood him themselves, but they loved him, and that had been enough." Vivek hides things in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, hinting at the possibility of a brighter future for gendervariant people - I need to read that now, just as the two books Emezi cites as their inspiration, Toni Morrison's Love and Gabriel García Márquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold....more
Now Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019 I feel torn between the considerable merit of this tale about the loss of dignity and the fact that I had a vNow Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019 I feel torn between the considerable merit of this tale about the loss of dignity and the fact that I had a very hard time finishing the book because of its repetitiveness and its excessive love for overly detailed descriptions: For what it has to say, this novel is at least 200 pages too long. Obioma tells the story of Chinonso, a young Nigerian poultry farmer, who falls in love with Ndali, a student of pharmacy. Ndali's family does not accept Chinonso because of his lack of education, so he sells all of his belongings in order to travel to Northern Cyprus - he was told that he could get a college degree there. But things do not turn out as planned...
Obioma does a fantastic job when it comes to describing the importance of personal dignity for the human soul: Again and again, Chinonso is confronted with degradation and cruelty, and he desperately tries to overcome or at least psychologically deal with it. In Nigeria, Ndali's family of social climbers does not grant him the respect he deserves for being a farmer, a sentiment which he internalizes; in Cyprus, he is a black foreigner who gets caught up in the system - thus, the book also touches upon the experiences of African immigrants. It is certainly no coincidence that Chinonso travels to Northern Cyprus, not the Republic of Cyprus: Not only did the author really meet a fellow Nigerian man in Northern Cyprus whose destiny inspired him to write this book, Chinonso also strands right at the border of the EU, but cannot cross into it (only the Republic of Cyprus is a member state).
Chinonso's travels are very loosely based on The Odyssey, but will Ndali, his Penelope, wait for him? What sets Obioma's book apart from the classic European tale is (among other things) the narrator: We hear the whole story from the point of view of Chinonso's chi, his guardian spirit which stands at the center of Igbo cosmological belief. The author has explained that he wanted to challenge the Western conception of agency: His book's central character has only limited agency, because the chi points to the dimension of destiny beyond human control. This is certainly a fascinating narrative concept (especially for Westerners like me who are largely unfamiliar with Igbo culture), but to my ears, the very particular voice of the chi which frequently breaks the narrative flow by uttering rather long general philosophical musings was sometimes a little hard to bear, especially the relentless repetition of its signature sentence: "I have seen it many times" - I admit that at some point, I wanted to slap Chinonso's chi for repeating this one sentence over and over and over again. On the other hand, Obioma intended to break with Western traditions of writing, so there is certainly the factor of Western readers struggling with his approach that influences the reading experience, and that absolutely can't be held against the author.
As the story progresses, it becomes clear why the chi insists on giving us all, and I mean ALL!, the details about its host Chinonso and what happened to him, but guys, this is one looooooooooong book that outstays its welcome - if it was shorter, I'm sure it would have a higher impact. The topic of dignity is one of the most urgent in our current political climate, it is at the core of questions like migration, the culture wars, identity politics etc.: Chinonso is just one member of the "Orchestra of Minorities" which is made up by millions of people worldwide who have to fight for their dignity. So I really wish I could have loved this novel more, but ultimately, it buried an urgent topic under too many words....more
Nominated for the Booker Prize 2019 There are two ways to read this book: As a campy, Tarantino-esque killer romp, or as a novel about trauma and co-dNominated for the Booker Prize 2019 There are two ways to read this book: As a campy, Tarantino-esque killer romp, or as a novel about trauma and co-dependency within a family. Set in Lagos, Nigeria, our narrator is Korede, a young, obsessive, and generally über-correct nurse – except when it comes to moral standards, that is, because she is frequently occupied helping her aloof and beautiful sister Ayoola cleaning up the mess after she killed another one of her boyfriends with a knife. When Ayoola tries to seduce a doctor named Tade, Korede’s colleague and crush, Korede’s dilemma intensifies: How can she save her beloved Tade from her dangerous, scheming sister? It seems like everyone around her is blinded by her sister’s immense beauty and unable to see her true nature.
The ensuing scenes and dialogues are often witty and funny, and Braithwaite, a debut novelist in her 20s, infuses her narrative with wicked, entertaining ideas (of course, two-timing Ayoola works as an influencer, and one main character is in a coma). But then, there’s also a dark side to the story: As the novel progresses, we learn that Ayoola’s continuing killing spree is rooted in past experiences of violence and degradation, and that the almost magical knife has a story of its own. Korede has always been trying to protect her younger sister, being entangled in trauma herself and co-dependent when it comes to Ayoola’s…ähemmmm…let’s say: Coping mechanism. This theme of the family as a potentially toxic entity also plays on other levels of the story; at one point, a character quotes Jim Morrison: “The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.” - this is a key paragraph for the whole book.
Braithwaite also employs some interesting commentary on gender roles: Look out for what is said about a man’s reputation and a woman’s beauty, and how the two factors relate in the story. The author discusses marriage, the merging of two families, as a means to gain power and other advantages, and as a tool to gain power over women – there is some serious stuff going on under the outrageous, colorful surface of this tale.
So all in all, this is a smart debut with a fun narrative approach, but is this great literature? If you compare it to, let’s say Everything Under and In Our Mad and Furious City, the two absolutely outstanding debuts on last year’s Booker list, Braithwaite’s effort falls short: While it reads smoothly and certainly has some things to say, it still lacks complexity and depth when compared to Johnson and Gunaratne who bombarded us with intelligent ideas and poetic stunts. Nevertheless, I am curious what Braithwaite will come up with next, because she is a writer to watch.
If you'd like to listen to the pod gang and me discussing the book (in German), you can do so here....more
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has long been considered one of the main contestants for the Nobel Prize in Literature - and rightly so, as his writings on Kenyan cNgũgĩ wa Thiong'o has long been considered one of the main contestants for the Nobel Prize in Literature - and rightly so, as his writings on Kenyan culture and about the consequences of the British rule over his home country are invaluable for everyone trying to understand African history or colonialism in general. "Minutes of Glory" is a collection of short stories that show people at the crossroads, due to choice or circumstances, during different times in history. Their troubles and challenges are always deeply personal, but also political, reflecting back on Kenyan society and often on the colonialists and their racist worldview: There is a British wife and her Kenyan servant who (at first) are both unable to see each other as anything beyond their respective roles, there is a woman who can't have children, a student who committs suicide after failing an exam, a hypocritical missionary and a young boy who holds him accountable, Kenyan families decimated and traumatized by violence, concentration camps and broken homes, and there are even magical sightings of Michael Jackson.
"My writing is really an attempt to understand myself and my situation in society and in history", Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o explains in the foreward, and his conclusions are truly illuminating for his readers. When he was thrown into a maximum security prison after writing a play in an African language and staging it with local workers and peasants, the author secretly wrote Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir in order to fight the colonial "culture of silence and fear" and to uphold "Kenyan resistance culture, a revolutionary culture of courage and heroism (...). It's a creative, fight-back culture unleashing tremendous energies among the Kenyan people." "Minutes of Glory" is also a document of this, showing people trying to come to terms with universal human problems and feelings, but caught in specific circumstances, at a specific place, in a specific time....more
Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness"Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 "Freshwater" cleverly discusses the human mind by inquiring what actually constitutes "mental illness": To what degree is our inner fragmentation - the multitude of feelings and urges, the freedom to be many things - part of the human condition, and when does it become harmful and destructive? Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi employs African myths and Igbo spirituality in order to tell the story of Ada, who might suffer from bipolar disorder - or not. Or maybe the terms used by mental health professionals are not suitable to describe her experience at all?
Ada was prayed into existence by her parents and is possessed by gods - she is many: "She was contaminated with us, a godly parasite with many heads, roaring inside the marble room of her mind." The god named Asughara is reckless and fueled by anger, but also protects Ada from the trauma that is tormenting her. Saint Vincent, on the other hand, is gentle and roaming her dreams (plus there are others, less mentioned ones, like Yshwa who seems to be a Christ-like figure). To live with the gods in one entity becomes more and more painful for Ada, she feels desperate, exhausted and "sectioned" - at the same time, one wonders if the gods aren't right when they are saying "we're the buffer between you and madness, we're not the madness".
Emezi touches upon many topics during her story, among them child abuse, rape, self-harm, alcohol, suicide, toxic relationships, and depression. Gender also plays a major role, with Ada identifying as a non-binary transgender person ("She could move between boy and girl, which was freedom, for her and for us (the gods).") - just like the author who invented her. In many ways, this is a roman à clef (hint: Also pay attention to surgeries, tattoos, and dresses mentioned, among other things).
Some of the possible psychological reasons for Ada's painful multiplicity are given very late in the text, there are important hints at around 50 % and as late as 90 % of the book that feel a little like a deus ex machina (ha! sorry) - clearly, an author can choose to structure her narrative like that, but I am not a fan. My main criticism is very subjective though - I never really warmed to the text, and I wasn't invested in the story. The whole novel is a fragmented, highly constructed experiment in which gods speak in very detached, abstract voices. Does this make sense poetically? Absolutely. I didn't enjoy reading it though.
But I clearly see how people could love this book and admire Emezi for her inventive, edgy story that dares to be ambiguous, peculiar and challenging....more
Now available in English: The German Crocodile: A Literary Memoir Ijoma Mangold, my favorite literary critic, writes about his life growing up in HeideNow available in English: The German Crocodile: A Literary Memoir Ijoma Mangold, my favorite literary critic, writes about his life growing up in Heidelberg with a Silesian mother and an absent Nigerian father. Being the dark-skinned son of an unconventional psychotherapist for children and young adults, young Ijoma just wanted to be like the others - the title-giving "German crocodile" refers not only to the famous locomotive, but also to a wooden model of the animal that resides in the family's flat and constantly reminds him of his African heritage - and as a kid, he doesn't exactly appreciate it. But Mangold's attitude changes when he spends time in the US and, in his early twenties, gets to know his father and his Nigerian family. Still, he is pondering: Am I more German than the other Germans? Is my love for Thomas Mann and Richard Wagner a form of overcompensation? Am I overassimilated because of the color of my skin?
This memoir shines with its nuance and complexity: Mangold knows that he ultimately can't fully know who he is, but he is trying to grasp it, and this written attempt is captivating. His slightly nerdy personality, his curiosity and wit - so all the traits that make him fun to read and listen to - permeate through this narrative as he is wrestling with his own socialization, prejudices, ambition and insecurities. It is just a joy to hang out with the guy, and the book transports that. And of course, this is also one of the still far too few accounts of the black experience in Germany.
You need more Ijoma in your life? Understandable! Check out the guy on our podcast. ...more
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