The Lagos scene is where books happen – as per the written word having multiform events being organized for seasons on end.
I’ve been many moons away from Lagos, that is, “Eko – the city by the lagoon”, in the words of the poet Odia Ofeimun.
It was therefore quite a surprise receiving a phone call in my rustic countryside hermitage from the personable Azafi Omoluabi of Parresia Publishers, Lagos, stressing that she’s sending me a copy of Akin Adesokan’s newly published novel South Side.
It’s definitely not in my constitution to say “No” to Azafi even if I’m so far removed from the bright lights of the big city.
She did not send me just one book – she sent four!
When I went to collect the package, the crooked transport courier company keeper insisted I must pay One Thousand Naira, even as I knew that Azafi had paid for the portage.
I refused to pay, and was quite willing to start a war but Azafi volunteered to pay the wangled extra cost.
The four Parresia books that Azafi sent are as follows – South Side by Akin Adesokan; Yoruba Boy Running by Biyi Bandele; New York, My Village by Uwem Akpan; and How To Get Rid Of Ants by Jesutomisin Ipinmoye.
In this day and night of no electricity in Nigeria the reading of books can only happen catch-as-catch-can.
“Somehow we survive,” as my late great friend, Dennis Brutus, the legendary South African poet wrote.
South Side is Akin Adesokan’s second novel, after his 1996 Association of Nigerian Authors’ prize-winning first novel Roots In The Sky.
Rootlessness is all the rage as the protagonist of South Side, Abel Dankor, quests to find an anchor in the wide world. Abel is a successful novelist who started inauspiciously as a refugee student in 1950s England. A migratory bird in search of a home, Abel’s desire to settle in the fictional West African country of Mande gets thwarted by the unbidden death of his benefactor, the poet Sir Koroma Fouta. The search for meaning amid displacement for Abel is somewhat enlivened by the haunting presence of the lady Valeria and the emergence of Yacouba, his childhood friend, in a top post in Mande. Adesokan’s South Side earns endearing verisimilitude with the publishing of the titles, year of publication, and synopses of Abel Dankor’s five novels as the epilogue.
Displacement is also a fulcrum of Biyi Bandele’s last novel, Yoruba Boy Running, that got published after his sad death in August 2022. The 270-page book can be read as faction based on the life and times of Reverend Samuel Ajayi Crowther (c1809-1891), legendary missionary, linguist, minister, and abolitionist. In his foreword to Yoruba Boy Running entitled “Introduction: A Triumph Of Resilience”, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka writes: “We all knew the Ajayi story, of course – right from elementary school. Kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery. Rescued by British warships and deposited on a settlement called Sierra Leone Eventually restored to his home in present-day Nigeria a quarter of a century later, after life-and-death escapades plus, thankfully, immersion in intellection waters.” Soyinka draws an ominous parallel between the Malian slave traders who kidnapped thirteen-year-old Ajayi in the Nigerian town of Osogun in 2021 as narrated by Bandele and the modern-day raiders kidnapping school children in Nigeria today. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie whose 2006 novel Half Of A Yellow Sun was made into a movie by Biyi Bandele pays the mourned one deserving tribute thusly: “A true artist. A brilliant writer. An original thinker.”
A different shape of displacement underscores Uwem Akpan’s 481-page novel New York, My Village. The protagonist, born a year into the Biafran War in 1968, is named Ekong which translates to “War”. He wins a Toni Morrison Fellowship for Black Editors from his post as the managing editor of Mkpouto Books in Uyo, Nigeria, vowing: “Nothing was going to stop me from enjoying New York to the marrow, as we say back home in Ikot Ituno-Ekanem in the Niger Delta of Nigeria.” He travels to America and gets attached to a publishing house, Andrew & Thompson, to understudy their operations for four months during which he is billed to edit an anthology of stories by minority writers on the Nigeria-Biafra War. The white cultural majority in USA is juxtaposed with the harsh treatment meted out to the minorities by the majority Igbo folk during the Biafra War.
The final book sent to me from Parresia publishers is a collection of short stories, How To Get Rid Of Ants by Jesutomisin Ipinmoye. It is just as well that one is warned at the beginning to: “Jump into a collection that jolts you with stories and characters that embrace the weird, bizarre, and insane.” The fifteen stories are the sort that churn people’s minds, as the late maverick Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marachera, author of House of Hunger would say, intervolving, amongst other stories: getting rid of ants turns into almost unhinging the cosmos; the greed of eating goes way past the limits of life and death; plotting to get married becomes a matter of signs and wonders; grabbing instant wealth somewhat turns the world on its head etc. There is this application form insert in the book: “Jagbajantis Jazz Services: Curse Application Form – We Exist So Thunder Can Fire Your Enemies!” How To Get Rid Of Ants by Jesutomisin Ipinmoye is an avant-garde spellbinder.
The four Parresia books have given me such a lift in these depressing times. To still be publishing well-packaged books at this level in Nigeria deserves celebration. Azafi Omoluabi and Parresia books are reasons to believe.