Hopes and Troublems of Sisyphus by Akochukwubundunonyerem; See Far Books (SFB), Abuja, Nigeria; 2025
In the course of my literary engagements, I do encounter some intriguing books, provocative manuscripts, and multiform works-in-progress. The volume before my eyes now, Hopes and Troublems of Sisyphus by Akochukwubundunonyerem, according to the author, was first completed in 2009 with the working title “Yahoos” and sent to an American publisher who replied with the poser: “to what end?”
The author who bears the rather long pen-name Akochukwubundunonyerem states further: “At that time, I was not objectively clear about the answer to that question but I was sure that the characters’ roving and seeming aimlessness had a purpose. Today, I know. The purpose, perhaps, is that very seeming aimless roving purposelessness, that’s the purpose. Like Dutchman, like Sisyphus, endless, restless, tireless, relentless, perhaps aimless journeys of continuous endless circles.”
Call it Nigeria’s version of avant-garde fiction, Hopes and Troublems of Sisyphus by Akochukwubundunonyerem grabs attention from the very beginning with the wordplay “Troublems” of the title. The novel intervolves short pieces of drama and poetry in its sway. The issue of hoping against hope in futility is illustrated by the Greek myth of Sisyphus that impels man to roll a big stone up a mountain only for the stone to roll down again and again. There is also the ghost of the Flying Dutchman of the ship doomed to forever roam the seas without any port to anchor.
I have attempted many times to begin the writing of this review without success, not unlike James Baldwin who penned at the beginning of The Fire Next Time thus: “I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times.” The author of Hopes and Troublems of Sisyphus should have warned like Mark Twain did in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that “persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
It is on the note of what the literary scholar Stanley Amah would call “proclivity to the profane” that Hopes and Troublems of Sisyphus by Akochukwubundunonyerem starts out in Vatican City as Archbishop Gwam-Gwam – a name sometimes mispronounced as Quam-Quam or Wam-Wam – meets the Pope, kisses his ringed finger and asks: “Can it be truly true Holy Father that the Virgin Mary, mother of mercy of blessed memories never, not even for once tasted the Adam’s Apple?” The sacrilegious Gwam-Gwam is unrelenting by stressing: “Sex, your holiness, intercourse…”
The Holy Father could not but wonder: “You travelled thousands of miles to feed me with obscenities.” There is the clinching enquiry: “Questioning a capital principle of faith is no joke. What were you taught in the seminary?”
By way of a background, Archishop Gwam-Gwam had a wealthy father killed by envious relatives and his mother had to raise him independently. In the end, black-robed priests appeared and evacuated Gwam-Gwam.
In his 1990 posthumously published book, The Black Insider, the ungovernable Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera stated that he writes literature that “unhinges the world and churns up people’s minds.” It’s within such an ambit that the author Akochukwubundunonyerem functions. It takes the breath away to move fast from Vatican City to a suburb of a Nigerian city to encounter the archetypal modern-day Nigerian character named Dankwa, aka Danikpo, a Yahoo-Yahoo Boy psychology graduate. Dankwa and his fried Ajuju can hardly ever be outdone in the crowd shoving at a multinational job-hunting venue.
Akochukwubundunonyerem’s book Hopes and Troublems of Sisyphus offers a short drama sketch entitled “Simple Matter – Man Pass Man (Small Talk, No Case) located at a petrol station and starring Udo, a student Okada rider, and Ogbuu, a thug. Dankwa and his entourage are a menace to behold.
The reader is breathlessly taken to Jakpa Road in Warri, Heaven’s Gate Church, the ghetto areas of Lagos, Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu, St Vincent’s Cathedral in Canberra, Australia, University of Ile-Ife, the city of Milan in Italy, the Eastern Nigerian village of Amiri, and Bishop’s Holiday Resort, Durban, South Africa.
There is no let-up as the narrative goes further ahead to Aba, Lagos, Abuja, Owerri, Calabar, Kano, Algiers, Tripoli, Cairo, Dubai, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, London, Paris, Ikoyi, Lekki, Asokoro, Maitama, California USA, Hesperides Island of the Blessed etc.
In the mold of appreciating the Old and New Testament, there are plenteous characters to interrogate. It tests the will encountering the 19-year-old Mariam, daughter of a wealthy businessman, who grew up in Tehran, Baghdad, Alexandria and Saudi Arabia. Arresting personages do not come any heavier than the Reverend Shephard Ochongaloko and Grand Pa Benson Holy Holy Ifedinso.
It’s incumbent on the reader to take into his stride Archbishop Gwam-Gwam’s misconduct even as Cardinal Amanze counseled that he recant.
There are quotes to cherish such as: “Who could these sad faces tell the home they seek – another sugarcane plantation.” The catch is that the “advancements of man take him a step at a time to total annihilation.”
The redemption for me lies in the creative whence the remarkable positioning of verisimilitude in that the Selected Poems of Ajuju should get published posthumously toward the end of Hopes and Troublems of Sisyphus. The word wins in the end.
There are far too many stark realist fiction published in Nigeria such that it’s indeed compelling to bear witness to this radical departure. The tale helps to broaden the mind and redirect attention to other spheres. The suffering of Sisyphus via always rolling up the big stone up the mountain only for it to roll back to the bottom is at the very heart of confronting the question of the human condition. The wonder whether life has a meaning made one to undertake a recall of the 1942 treatise The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.
Even as the author of Hopes and Troublems of Sisyphus explains that he’s not Marxist-inclined, he believes that without “Fredrick Engels’ praxis, without his textile fortune as was said, all the ideas of Marx would have lain rotten and eaten by mote or covered up in dust in an unmarked cupboard somewhere unknown.” The author offers immense gratitude to the revolutionary scholar, Prof Udenta O. Udenta, and avers, “The reason I am is because I was and have always been.”
