Tag: nigeria

GHOSTROOTS by Pemi Aguda

Here is speculative horror fiction from Nigeria.  Unfortunately, it’s short stories, which I always struggle to get into.  However they were skilful stories.  I liked, for example, the description of a woman   “who is stroking her blond wig as if it were a living thing, a pet that needs comfort”

I also really enjoyed the way she evoked contemporary Nigeria, very dense and real.  This I thought was an interesting part, about a girl whose parents will not tell her anything about her grandparents:

“But what do Nigerian parents tell their children about their own parents?  Especially the Pentecostal Christians? Nothing.  If you took a poll of your friends, three out of five would be similarly ignorant of these histories of parents who moved from somewhere to Lagos, left behind religions and curses and distant cousins and grimy pasts”

That first generation who moves to town, who goes from nine kids to two, in any country, is an interesting one.

Nigeria is generally kind of an extreme place, and it makes for a fun setting for speculative fiction. One charter fears she is the reincarnation of her evil grandmother, and she asks her “coworkers if they believe in reincarnation.  Five of them believe. Two of them claim to have corroborative stories.” One of them feels she is a reincarnation – of Beyonce.

BURMA BOY by Biyi Bandele

This is a comic novel that is described in reviews as ‘vivid’ and ‘horrifying,’ and it certainly is. It tells the story of Nigerian soldiers fighting in Burma in WWII. There is a lot of joy in it, and especially in the dialogue, which bounces along with the kind of fun I recognize from my Abuja days. Try this, when one man finds he has been assigned as muleteer rather than a soldier:

“‘Mules?’ Ali gasped as if he’d been stung by a driver ant. ‘Do you know who I am? I’m the son of Dawa the king of well-diggers whose blessed nose could sniff out water in Sokoto while he’s standing in Saminaka. I’m the son of Hauwa whose mother was Talatu whose mother was Fatimatu queen of the moist kulikuli cake, the memory of whose kulikuli still makes old men water at the mouth till this day. Our people say that distance is an illness; only travel can cure it. Do you think that Ali Banana, son of Dawa, great-grandson of Fatima has crossed the great sea and travelled this far, rifle strapped to his shoulder, to look after mules?'”

It is a very accomplished book, but I could not finish it. It was just too sad. People’s heads explode mid-sentence, people are left to die on death marches, you get the idea. I am hesitant about if you should ever die in any war, even a just war, even a war for your own country. I am not sure there is ever victory in death. And certainly, these Nigerians dying in Asia, for a European war: I just couldn’t handle it.