Books deliver both joy and pain. They deliver knowledge, wisdom and take us to places we may never visit. We all should read books because we will benefit from them
By Olukorede Yishau
Busier schedule has robbed me of much of the time I used to enjoy in the company of fictional and real-life characters captured in books. So, as 2023 begins to pack its luggage, I have read less than forty books. I used to read over 60 books in a year. A chunk of my 2023 reads are by Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora.
In the year, UK-based Oyin Olugbile’s ‘Sanya’ is a revelation for me. Though the book was published in 2022, I only read it this year. Oyin is a discovery, a force, a star, a master, a storyteller of immense talent.
Her gem of a book will take you on a path only few mortals have trod and you will see, hear and feel things beyond this world and your soul will hum tunes of joy for being led to such a path. It is powerful, magnificent, page-turning, epic, fascinating, brilliant and unforgettable. These are words that aptly capture Olugbile’s achievement with this joy of a read.
She is one writer to look out for and the sky is certainly infinitesimal for her to soar.
How can I forget ‘When We Were Fireflies’, the sophomore novel of a star of no mean standing, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim? Brilliance shines through every single paragraph of this remarkable tale about a man who, before his current life, had lived two previous lives and was on each occasion killed for love. Memories of those eras invade his privacy after a visit to a train station, and he decides to go after those who murdered him. In the process, he meets the one who loved and still loves him. A portion of this book is an audio book on Amazon Original and I love it so much I have lost count of the number of times I have listened to it.
Abubakar, who is a recipient of the Nigeria Prize for Literature, dazzles with this work. If ‘When We Were Fireflies’ were a house, it is one painstakingly built, one brick at a time, the right concrete mix, appropriate pillars, well-fit furniture and ultimately habitable and cosy. If it were a cake, it is one well-baked, not too much icing, or sugar or flour, just the right mix. And if it were akara, it is one well-seasoned, well-mixed, well-fried and meant to be savoured bite by bite. For his precise and elegant voice, Ibrahim deserves to be read worldwide.
I will for long admire the Nigeria Prize for Literature winner and professor, Chika Unigwe, for her fifth novel, ‘The Middle Daughter’. This book took my peace away and didn’t return it until I finished reading it.
This novel is written in standard English Language but there are parts of it that are Nigerian English and the beauty can truly be appreciated by a Nigerian. She sought, like Achebe, to do with English what the oyinbos didn’t think it was capable of.
The family at the heart of the novel is Igbo and the author transcribed their world without altering their Igboness. She stretched and forced English to do her will to achieve this.
Relief washed over me when I got to the end, relief that the author righted the wrong in the Hades-Persephone myth, relief for Nani, and relief for myself because we went through the storm together and we deserved the calmness.
And from the Chinua Achebe Prize for Literature winner and the Nigeria Prize for Literature finalist, Obinna Udenwe, came a collection of long-form stories, ‘The Widow Who Died With Flowers in Her Mouth’. This book from this unabashed Haruki Murakami disciple is deep, surreal and magical.
The appeal of Ukamaka Olisakwe’s first young adult fiction, ‘Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name’, goes beyond its target audience. With this book, the Isele magazine founder secured a special slot in my heart.
The story at the heart of Olisakwe’s book is one that was told and told and told and told to the point that the possibility of there being another side to it was not given a chance. All that stopped when a girl, unaware of her powers, met the woman they had been told was responsible for their woes.
I can also not easily forget I.O. Echeruo’s ‘Experts In All Styles’, a collection of amazing short stories.
Echeruo’s collection of short stories has characters that are well-drawn. His stories are explorations on power, political power, domestic power, religious power and the good and bad to which power is put.
Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode’s ‘The Stolen Daughters of Chibok’ made a great impression on me. It is a fantastic collaboration between Muhammed-Oyebode and ace photojournalist Akintunde Akinleye. The book features interviews with 152 of the over 200 Chibok families affected by the April 14, 2014 schoolgirls’ abduction. It captures their lives before and after the abduction.
The book has contributions from ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, and ‘Fine Boys’ author Eghosa Imasuen. The book also has essays by Helon Habila and Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, two award-winning writers who have written books on the Chibok girls. There are other interesting contributions that examine germane angles.
Michael Afenfia also gave me a great time with his latest novel, ‘Leave My Bones in Saskatoon’. It hints at the downside of migrating as an adult, the loneliness most immigrants wrestle with, the cultural and culinary differences, the extreme temperatures, and the absence of familiar community. Even with steady jobs and a working system, they are constantly nostalgic about home but the uncertainty about the state of things in Nigeria convinces them that the decision to ‘japa’ was one of the best things ever.
Lola Akinmade’s ‘Everything is not Enough’ has remained with me and is not about to leave me. The work touches on the evil of conflicts, conflicts that displace people and force them to seek refuge in places where even when they spend decades, they will never fully be accepted but just tolerated. The author opens the sore that conflicts represent. We feel the senselessness in wars and conflicts of any kind.
The author creates so much crises that one may worry about how she is going to resolve them. This is one of the aspects that a reader is likely to give her flowers because not only are all the seemingly scattered threads brought together, they are merged with panache and grace and the outcome is a fitting climax to an exhilarating ride!
Ayobami Adebayo’s Booker Prize-nominated ‘A Spell of Good Things’ cast a spell on me and I’m yet to see a pastor who will free me from the affliction.
This heavily political novel is built around Eniola and Wuraola. It is the story of the modern Nigeria, where the rich keep getting richer, and the poor poorer; where politicians play politics for pecuniary gains, where the life of an average citizen isn’t worth much, where infrastructure is at ground zero, where values are debased, where potentials aren’t fully utilised, where leaders are dealers, and where the political class sees nothing wrong in shedding some blood to attain political power. It is a warning about the dangers of classism in our nation with deep economic fissures, underfunded health service and challenges numerous to recount.
Adebayo’s super star writer spouse, Emmanuel Iduma, released a non-fiction book, ‘I Am Still With You’ and its imprints have stayed with me. The pacing of this non-fiction has the marks of fiction. It recreates the Biafran experience from a personal angle. And brilliance runs through! The book portrays Iduma as keen-eyed. There is a rhythmic stance to his prose that makes reading easy. The book also does us the favour of letting us know that the past is not really gone. It remains with us so long as it still dictates some of our actions and even inactions.
Sefi Atta’s ‘The Bad Immigrant’, though not published this year but read during the year, unveils an America that is a bully, a country that values comformity over merit, a country where an immigrant’s academic prowess is no guarantee of success, a self-appointed defender of the universe, a nation always looking for trouble overseas, and a nation which runs away from race issues yet confronts it every day.
Another 2022 novel that I read this year is the brilliant TJ Benson’s ‘People Live Here’. The novel is like nothing the author had ever published. ‘Madhouse’ is a tale of a strange family steeped in dreams, politics and history. He tells the story with accustomed dexterity, poetry and drama. His language is sophisticated, his sentences are a mixture of simple, compound and compound-complex structures, and the story structure is complex and non-linear. The non-linear nature of the story aids suspense. Benson understands characterisation and develops all the principal characters to a point where if seen on the road they can be identified.
Lastly, I will add Bisi Adjapon’s ‘Daughter in Exile’ because I want Ghananians to quarrel with me as though this were another jollof debate. She is Bisi and that makes her Yoruba. Adjapon has told a compelling story that challenges decades of alternative truths about what womanhood should be. She weaves love, race, relationships, and humanity into this book and the result is a striking portrait of a woman intent on defeating a system designed to wear her down and consign her to peripheral living.
My final take: Books deliver both joy and pain. They deliver knowledge, wisdom and take us to places we may never visit. We all should read books because we will benefit from them.
* Yishau is a newspaper columnist and author.