Favourite Five: Onyeka Nwelue

Onyeka Nwelue was born in 1988 in Nigeria. He has contributed reviews to Farafina magazine and other publications. His writings have appeared in The Sun, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Kafla Inter-Continental and The Guardian. He is the editor of Film Afrique, a primer on African film initiatives, he manages Blues and Hills Consultancy and is currently studying film making and directing. He was nominated as artist of the year for The 2009 Future Awards. The Abyssinian Boy is his first novel. He tells us about his favourite five books!

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things is the only book I’ve read more than fifty times. It is easy to call me a mad man or say that I am lying, but take my word. I’ve bought countless copies of this masterpiece and I have continued to stare at the arrangement of words, the construction of sentence, the structure of the novel and the cultural landscape of the book. It won the Booker Prize in 1997 and since then, Roy hasn’t written another novel. It will be hard to write another book, anyway, if I had written this. It is absolute beauty and symbolizes real talent. One of the most clever things Roy did with this book is the use of language to create an impression that will last forever on the reader. I once joked on my Facebook that anyone who hasn’t read The God of Small Things should bury his head in shame and I was attacked. Yet, I meant every word I said then, I still do.

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
The first time I travelled to India, I landed in Mumbai. It is a bustling city, very peopled and has an amazing nightlife. Here, Midnight’s Children is set in Bombay, which is the old name of Mumbai and it is just like the city. There are so many things happening in the book. There are too many people. There are too many real life incidents, factually fictionalized and so many languages getting fused with another; there is an invention of a language called Hinglish. I don’t know what the plot of the book is; many readers always want to know. What I know is that I was transported into another realm, into another country, by the mere beautiful power of the pen and imagination. If there is any novel that would rival The God of Small Things in the history of Indian writing in English, it should be this beautiful Book of History. It is about everything hidden under the sun.

Famished Road by Ben Okri
I bought this book in a local bookshop in Delhi. And as soon as I started reading it, it transported me back to Nigeria. Thoughts raced through my head. This was not the Nigeria I knew, yet, I felt I knew it. It was so familiar to me. Some amazing sense of humour. It was a disturbing book, in the sense that I kept trying to imagine things happening in Nigeria just like they are happening in the book. Just like the two previous books, there are many characters and this is the sort of writing that gives me joy. I am still hoping that one day, I will meet Ben Okri and look him in the eyes.

A Strange and Sublime Address by Amit Chaudhuri

Amit Chaudhuri’s novels are always slim in volume. They look like books of poetry. By the time you are able to buy and start reading them, you will realize that the beauty of any great book is in its story. He is a writer who understands his environment and takes absolute advantage of it, by describing it very vividly. If any reader leaves pages of his books without visiting Calcutta, then that reader didn’t read the book. For the most part, A Strange and Sublime Address did the work Lonely Planet couldn’t do for me. It transported me to India, taught me Bengali language, tradition and culture and I was drenched by the monsoon rains and ate mangoes on the streets of India. It is just a beautiful book, filled with beautiful humour.

Walking with Shadows by Jude Dibia

Few years ago, I read a book about a guy who is married and has a daughter. He has a secret: he loves men. He is Nigerian. So, he has to hide that fact from people so they won’t kill him. He tells that to a South African woman who tells someone, because she doesn’t feel there is anything wrong in it. It is the first book I loved that focuses on just one person, although many people would say the book also centres on the wife. Through the lush literary landscape created by Jude Dibia in this amazing debut, I swept through the horrors Adrian faces, seeking acceptance, quietly looking for a saviour. It is one book which appeals to the heart and to the head and gives you goose-bumps, because Dibia makes reality a fiction by just playing on the consciousness of the characters. One book that should be read by anyone who understands what it means to be a human being.

Ayo Makinde: On Writing Distorted

Distorted (The Nemesis) was one tiring long journey that has taken courage, determination and persistence. The art of writing and drawing have always been more of an hobby than a profession for me. I am a lawyer by training, but by passion a writer and artist. l started writing the script for the comic book- Distorted during my fourth year on campus. 

I see myself as a child of two worlds--the literary world of books and the artistic world of comics. My role models when it comes to fiction include- Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka and Ted Dekker while in the world of comics, 'Marvel Comics' remain my favourite; their graphics and concepts are inspiring. Spiderman happens to be the 'Marvel hero' that fascinates me the most. I cannot forget Peter Parker's (Spiderman) favourite statement- with great power comes great responsibility. That's deep!

Being nurtured by these two worlds of art, I did not have it in mind to produce a comic book for children even though comics in the Nigerian environment is mostly associated with children. My idea was to blend the two worlds of fiction and art together so perfectly; and to use the product as a tool to transmit the right values to shape the mindset of the society. 

The title 'Distorted' means- life is one distorted puzzle without the god factor. I wanted to make a comic book any youth or adult could read and learn from. That was how the journey of Distorted began. After I finished writing the script of the first edition of the comic book, I gave it to the pastor of my local church who was youth-friendly. He went through it, loved the story and encouraged me to take a step further by taking it to the press. The maiden edition of the comic book titled- Distorted (The Genesis) went to the press afterwards. The comic was well accepted, attracting rave reviews. However, it was not much of a success in terms of distribution and sales. One of the reasons being that the quality of the print was not good enough due to insufficient fund. Also, I did not take time to study the industry and understand how it worked. I was just a greenhorn who wanted to get my work out there. I learnt my lessons.

It took another challenging five years to get the second edition of the comic published.  You would wonder why?  I'd been pre-occupied with my legal practice and lost touch with fine art to some extent, so I had to engage the services an illustrator. I'm more of a writer now. The search for an illustrator back then was consider tiring, perhaps because comics is not common in this environment. It took years before I got one who gave me what I wanted in terms of professionalism.  I actually had the comic redrawn four times by four different persons before I got what I wanted. I also had the cover page redrawn several times too. I've actually lost count of that. 

Apart from the challenge of funding, I had to contend with another challenge, which was that of getting a publisher. The first publisher I approached rejected my work on the ground that comics were for children and a comic book for youths and adults was alien to the Nigerian environment.

After much persistent search, though I was tempted to give up at some point, I came across Magic Wand Publishing, an innovative publishing house with a broad view to literary works. They were able to see through my vision and considered it a novel idea. We entered into an agreement that gave birth to the second edition of the comic. 

Distorted (The Nemesis) is set to redefine the face of comic book in Nigeria and beyond. Though not without challenges which at every point in time stares me in the eyes, I believe every challenge is a stepping stone to greater heights of excellence.       

The comic Distorted is distributed across  Nigeria by Magazine Circulation Nigeria Ltd, and available in major book stores.  Every year, the Garden City Literary Festival has writing workshops for budding writers. 

The Voice Interviews: Adedotun Eyinade

Dotun Eyinade

Adedotun Eyinade started the Pulpfaction Book Club to encourage reading in Nigeria; they organise the monthly book readings at Debonair Bookstores. He tells us about his favourite five books. He had this to say about his love for reading.

What are your fondest memories of growing up? One of the fondest memories, asides attempting to read every book I found in our bookshelf, was making up with our neigbhours' kids with whom I had quarrelled because I wanted to swap novels with them. I also recall reading the Rise and Fall of Idi-Amin in primary school. A classmate had taken the book off his father’s shelf to brag about his father’s collections. I talked him into lending me the book. The book was eventually seized by my class teacher who felt the details in the book would fly over my head. It gave me great joy any time I recollect that I stole  the book back from my class teacher’s house when I visited him after primary school. Reading was all that protected me from negative influences rife back then in my neighbourhood. Reading Famous Five adventures, comics, Pacesetters series and African Writers Series fired my imagination and left an insatiable thirst for more books.

Why the interest in encouraging reading? I suppose encouraging reading came natural. I grew up in an environment surrounded by books. Books provided me succour and timely sanity while growing up. I have always been a believer in the capacity of a well-read public to challenge and unsettle a pernicious status-quo. The reason why we deify the puny minds who have brought us to this sorry pass as a nation is because we don’t know any better and the capacity to ask questions that reading fosters is sadly missing. I believe that building an army of well-read and informed citizenry is at the heart of well-intentioned effort to build the Nigeria of our dreams. I dream of a time when kids will be able to reel off from the top of the heads the names of celebrated Nigerian authors like they are familiar with the names of today’s soccer league and music greats.

When and why did you start Book n Gauge? Book n Gauge was informed by the need to bring books and authors closer in an environment where they can engage each other and swap ideas. Books and the themes they address are living subjects and they should fuel animated discussions they way soccer buffs fiercely debate matches. That passionate exchange is what we seek to achieve. The book of the month selection for our book club is also discussed during the event. What more, we are also not averse to good music, drama sketches, networking give-aways, photo-ops and autograph sessions. Who says reading cannot be hip and cool? I have always been puzzled by the dearth of collectives whose common interest is reading and books. It is worse that community libraries are sadly few, usually in a dismal state. I wanted to create an avenue for hip and busy crowd to spare time to read and share books that they love and draw meanings with social relevance. Reading can be hip and cool again. Reading is not only for the nerds and the wonks. We wanted to make a statement that one can be new media savvy, hip, cool and still be well informed. Through the Pulpfaction club, we want to create the biggest community of book lovers in Nigeria and our focus is young people who will eventually sire a generation of young ones who will be naturally gravitated towards books just the same way kids today are wont to do video games.

From my findings, in the early independence years, the reading culture was still around…what happened, in your own words? It is the economy, stupid. James Carville couldn’t have put it better. Nigerians became obsessed with the prosaic details of getting by to cater for their minds. Everything is now seen through the prism of utility. We go to school not to get our minds beautified but as a means to landing a plum job and thus the process is abuse. It is all about the money, that is our creed. So that means as soon as schooling is over then it is au-revoir to reading. I have heard this question ad nauseum: ‘will this book bring food to my table?’ The question of access is another thing. The crippling absence of infrastructure for distribution of books is disheartening. There are few good book stores and they are almost always located in the up-scale areas. Every other store masquerading as book stores only sell religious tracts. Government and corporate organizations must invest in building libraries and resources centres and make them accessible. Enough of jamborees and concerts. Let’s build an informed citizenry.

When it comes to the reading culture, what was different when you were growing compared to now? Bookshelves were fashionable in living room. In fact it was a sign that the family was a pretender to the non-existent middle class or the last vestige before the military era wiped them out. Today flat screen TV is the symbol of arrival. The bookshelves are gathering dust somewhere in the stores and no one remembers t build a study when they build fanciful houses.

How do you encourage people to read? Read along with others especially the book of the month. Hang out and discuss the books the same way we discuss the movies that we love and the soccer matches of the previous nights. Throw in good music, poetry and a good measure of the cool, perhaps Nigerians will start to read religiously the way they read their devotional material authored by their pastors.

How do you blend your passion for books with your busy schedule? I have got a great team that I could delegate tasks to. I also that I use public transport to work so that frees my time to read en route to and from work. I carry tablets too so I can jot my ideas and of course, I can push emails on the goal. Who ever created audio books deserves a place at Jesus’ right hand. I am a great fan. I have also caught down on faffing time on Facebook. The time saved leaves me with time to think about making reading cool again.

Is it true that Nigerians don’t read? Or do they just choose what they read? Nigerians read but they are too hungry to buy and care about books. Even those who are well off to buy books don’t read except to pass exams and get by. It is also a question of access too. No good book stores except shacks were they sell motivational and ‘how to be rich’ schemes.

Why is reading  important? Reading refines the minds and broadens one’s worldview. A widely read person sees the world differently. He/She is open minded. Like Francis Bacon Said, Reading makes a complete man. It is the ultimate step to getting there although we all don’t get there.

What do you think is the biggest challenge to promoting a reading culture in Nigeria: dying publishing sector, hunger or just lack of interest? Hunger. Getting down the bass tack, a hungry man needs to eat first before you pitch books to him. Feed him first and bring books along his way. It is still the economy, stupid.

How can the publishing industry boom? Investing in capacity and also build infrastructure for distribution. Let’s do other genres too. Something less serious. We should create our own Harry Potter

What do you think of the Federal Government’s “Bring Back the Book” Campaign? What can be done to improve it? It is another jamboree; another stunt. Bring back the libraries. Don’t pack the stage with pop stars who don’t know any better. Government should give incentive to publishing houses and prop up libraries with funds and books. Corporate Organisation should cut down on concerts. A reading public is a corporate asset.

What keeps you going despite all? The brevity of it all. So why not pack as much into it. Perhaps it could be eventful.

Define literature in a sentence The ultimate science of depiction of human nature. What the minds can conceive

Eyinade works as a risk advisor in a professional services firm by day. He is an ardent lover of books.

Chuma Nwokolo: On Writing His Stories

The idea for a story comes from the tale itself. I work like an amateur archaeologist. I usually stumble across a single bone. My first 'Waterside' story, "The Destitute" [African Tales at Jailpoint, 1999], came that way. 

Which bone I found? the first sentence: 

In the morning they found him lying by the roadside, not ten metres from Ma'Comfy's buka.

Pedestrian words, true, but one can never begin the reconstruction, until one feels, relative to any arrangement of ‘pedestrian’ words, the same breathlessness archaeologists must have felt when they first beheld the fossil of the feathered dinosaur, Archaeopteryx. When those words - and the image they evoked - first occurred to me, they felt electric and textured, so pregnant and portentous that I willingly submitted myself to the term of imprisonment that writing inflicts on its practitioners.

What I visualised in that sentence was a fellow lying on an untarred street, decent but well-worn clothes, a one-week stubble, that sort of thing. It was already clear to me that it couldn't be a Lagos street. For a start such a fellow would not make the evening news on a Lagos street, how much more the bookshop. It therefore had to be a tale from rural Nigeriana. Hence Waterside.

My investigation continued. Why was he lying by the roadside. Where was he going, where was he coming from. I decided straightaway that those last couple of questions were red herrings, completely irrelevant to a short story (which is the species of literature to which I had decided that this bone belonged). The relevant clue was 'Ma'Comfy's buka'. The woman and her buka were clearly key to the story. Writing a short story is like leaping off the bank of the Niger to dive for a gem at the bottom. You take one deep breath and go. Once you're in the water you don't have the time to mess around, you just take your single gem and go. A short story is like that. There's no time to follow every thread like a novelist who has his reader by the nose and trails him through Hell and all her Dominions... I promptly discovered Ma'Comfy right inside the crowd that had gathered around the man in the meantime. (Nobody had paid any attention to the fellow until he started to weep). Listen:

I just hate to see grown men crying.' - that was Ma'Comfy. She was the shortest person in the crowd, but she was also the fattest. She delivered her opinion, her cross-eyes looking at no one in particular, and she turned and pushed her no-nonsense way out through the press.

Now as soon as I wrote those words, I realised that although true, they were a skewed portrayal of a woman whose essential dignity could be traced in her no-nonsense manner and the fact that she had a buka to her name. I thought that to depict her essence by a superficial reference to her shortness, stoutness and the alignment of her eyes was akin to describing Nsala soup to a non-Nigerian by giving him a pepper. I then devoted some thought and pages to shading in the nuances of a essentially noble character who had somehow become more central to my story than the fellow on the roadside... the plot thickened. For a bustling street scene in a short story, one could hardly afford the privilege even of creating caricatures for every person with an opinion. So I caricatured the crowd itself, dispensing with individual characters in favour of one multi-tongued personality. This was how the dialogue went:

Although it had sympathetic voices, it wasn't a totally sympathetic crowd. A female voice was asking: 'Is he sick? is that why he's crying?' The crowd was not lacking in opinion. From here and there, the voices came.

'Even if he's sick, is that the reason for him to block the road? Is he the only one that is sick?'

'Me myself, does he know my own sickness? If I tell you my own sickness, now, all of you will start crying.'

I liked how it panned out, and decided to use that device further down the tale. By this time, I knew enough of the skeleton to show anyone peeking into the reconstruction chamber that my destitute had been well and truly rehabilitated by Ma'Comfy's peppersoup and by her dignified patronage. It was night time, the motley crowd was gathered around Mentu's suya brazier, but they were not interested in the grilled mutton, they were interested in the gist. What it was? You‘ll see. I identified one character, caricatured him, and cast him loose in the multi-voiced crowd:

That night, it was the passion of the discussion that welded the crowd together. What infuriated them most was the issue of the wrapper. No one was more incensed that Ntume the carpenter. he still recalled two years before, when bus-corner ankara first became the vogue. He'd had to sell his prized electric lathe to buy his wife's ankara in order to head off divorce. 'Kai! her own bus-corner

wrapper!'

`A beggarman to wear a whole councillor's wrapper!'

`That she wears on her own body!'

`Is black magic, nothing else.'

`You're right, only juju can make Ma'Comfy crazy like that.'

`Nonsense, there is nothing like juju in this matter, Ma'Comfy is

just a good Samaritan, that's all.'

`Hah! Good Samaritan indeed! Then why hasn't she mercied me all these

years I've been begging for her pepper-soup on credit? 

Of course there's a limit to the archaeology in literature. It is after all, more art than science. It is in the fleshing out that the art come into its own. Sometimes a bone will show stubbornly how it belongs in the prolix pages of a novel and I, unwilling to pay the terms of imprisonment for a novel, will snip it into a short tale. At other times, the What, Who and Why of it all begins to draw the story off into the tracts of a genre alien to my skill set and the inventor in me has to trump the archaeologist. It's my time and energy after all, and someone has to keep an eye on the game plan. Yes the story belongs to the bone, but in the end I must like it well enough to have its reconstructed beast sitting on my desk, answering to my name…

Every bone has an inherent integrity and my inventive efforts to make it interesting, funny, or modern may produce an unpersuasive Pterodactylus… the flying reptile that is neither bird of the air nor beast of the earth… It may rebel against my invention, preferring its own skin. For my own part, I might be repelled by the emerging identity of the tale (ie, Sorry, Bone, I don't do Hate tales…). At that point, I turn to my delete button, while my erstwhile inspiration returns to the lap of her muse, to seek a worthier writer.

Nwokolo is a writer, advocate, and publisher of African Writing. His books include Diaries of a Dead African (novel in 3 diaries) and Memories of Stone (Poetry Collection) and Ghosts of Sani Abacha. You can buy his titles here. 

Book Launch of Eghosa Imasuen’s Fine Boys

Details here.

Favourite Five: Kola Tubosun

Kola Tubosun

Kola Tubosun has published poetry, fiction, and travel articles in print and online publications around the world. His short story "Behind the Door" appeared in a 2010 short story anthology titled “Africa Roar”, available on Amazon. Author of a book of poems in English, Headfirst into the Meddle (2005), and an unpublished collection of translated poems and literary texts between Yoruba and English. Poems “E=mc2″ and “Creation Story” won the prestigious Christopher Okigbo Poetry Prizes in Ibadan in 2002 and 2004 respectively. Poem “Here, moving” won the Sentinel Poetry Bar Challenge in October 2006. He tells us about his five (plus one) favourite  books.

Surely You Must be Joking, Mr Feyman! Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman, physicist, artist and prankster, is one of my favourite characters, not just because of his work ethic or influence on modern science. He was also a person that valued the ordinary things of life, and did everything to live it to the fullest. That book, one of my first and most fascinating introduction to the man and to theoretical physics, is also one of my favourites. I read it again once in a while. I recommend the sequel as well "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out", which featured a few more essays on a number of different things.

My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl

It's one of the funniest, brilliant adult fictions I've read by a writer of children stories. I haven't read any other book by Roald Dahl, but this book was a very notable introduction. I got it as a gift in 2005, and I have bought it about three more times after then. It always kept walking out of my shelf. Anyone who reads it will discover why. Never having read Maurice Sendak either - another brilliant children writer - Dahl has remained one of my favourites. This book, My Uncle Oswald, features an alternate history of the world through the foibles of writers, scientists and other famous people. Watch out also for a copious amount of ribaldry. 

Illustrissimi by Albino Luciani

Written as letters to historical figures (dead and alive), Pope John Paul 1 addresses a whole lot of issues from a unique and often non-pedagogical perspective. It is notable that he was also the pope with the shortest reign ever (33 days or so), and whose death is subject to a whole lot of controversy and conspiracy. I have not read the book again in over a decade, but I remember being moved by the depth and range of his thought on a whole number of issues which no other major religious leader (especially in the Catholic church) has touched since. I'm sure that there are part of the work that I will disagree with now as I did then, but the brilliance of the form and content makes it one of my favourite texts.

Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay
Part autobiographical, part fiction, the author takes you on a road from Scotland to Abuja. It is one woman's journey to finding her roots. I'm still on the first few chapters.

Miguel Street by VS Naipaul, and Ibadan by Wole Soyinka 

I can't figure which I like more. Both are a fictionalized retelling of a youth. Naipaul's account starts much earlier than Soyinka's, but my closeness to the events recounted in Soyinka's quasi memoir makes it all the more fascinating. Less innocent than an earlier account in Ake, and definitely more engaging than a subsequent one Isara, Ibadan is fun, playful, intriguing, and genuinely representative of a crucial time in the country's history. It's Nigeria's version of The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. So is Miguel Street, by the way. Just much less fictional. Both writers are some of the world's best.

Guest Writer: Lola Shoneyin

Lola Shoneyin is the author of So All the Time I was Sitting on an Egg, Song of a Riverbird, and The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives. Read her poetry on Sentinel Nigeria. She lives in Abuja, where she teaches English and Drama. Lola is married, with four children and three dogs.