ktravula – a travelogue!

At Elnathan John’s Book Party

2015-11-13 20.34.19Tonight, I attended the book party for Elnathan John’s new book Born on a Tuesday (Cassava Republic, 2015). The event held at Bogobiri House in Ikoyi and was well attended by friends, writers, and other well-wishers who came to listen to the author talk about and read from his debut novel. The novel was written as an extension of a short story “Bayan Layi” which was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2013. (I reviewed it here and here). The author has been shortlisted for the prize one more time, in 2015.

Elnathan had a chance to talk about the process of writing the book, which came from his obsession with understanding Sufi and Salafi movement – branches of Sunni Islam, and with telling the untold stories from Northern Nigeria to an audience that either didn’t care enough for it, or just isn’t sufficiently exposed. This personal curiosity, the author said, had burdened him for a while until he finally got the chance to address it in form of a short story and later to expand it into a novel form after encouragement by the reading public and by Cassava Republic Press who will also be publishing the book in the UK earlier next year.

2015-11-13 20.28.21He then read excerpts from the work, including a part where Dantala, the main character of the novel, spent considerable time considering whether or not to continue to kill lizards because of a religious encounter with the Sheik even while he had no such scruples about killing human beings. (There was also a mild detour to get his publisher, Bibi Bakàrè-Yusuf, to pronounce “Dantala” like a Hausa speaker would). He also read a part about “santi”, an expression relating to delight and longing for food which Elnathan admitted cannot successfully be translated into English. The conversation also eventually addressed what it means to be literate — especially if one already speaks (and can write) other local languages, but not English. The audience then got to ask questions, and eventually get their books signed.

2015-11-13 20.27.34The event which was memorable to me because of its celebration of a work that paid attention to understanding the beginning, costs, and complexities of violence in religion, has now taken a new dimension now that I am home, and learning of an ongoing terrorist attack in Paris, France. It all feels like an unreal web of weirdly-timed coincidences, and the heart sinks again into despair. On the one hand is a night where literature attempts to do what politics (and guns) perhaps had failed to do, and on the other is a reemergence of force as a wailing voice of the unheard and the resentful, taking innocent lives with it. Perhaps literature will suffice to enlighten and create a better future. Or, perhaps, that is just futile resignation and avoidance of more direction action. But we have this piece of literature now, and reading it just got a tad more imperative.

The book costs 2,000 naira and is 264 pages long, including acknowledgements. The cover is designed simply as a fiery flame from which a shadowy figure of a young man is seen to be fleeing. Blurbs on the back were written by Táíyé Selasi (Ghana Must Go), Petinah Gappah (The Book of Memory), Elliot Ackerman (Green on Blue) and Molara Wood (Indigo). “Narrated in Dantala’s raw yet inquisitive voice,” the summary reads on the book flap, “this astonishing debut novel explores brotherhood, religious fundamentalism and loss, and the effects of extremist politics on everyday life in contemporary Northern Nigeria.” It promises to be an engaging read.

Meanwhile, let’s spare a thought for Paris tonight.

At Elnathan John’s Book Party was published on November 13th, 2015, with the tags , , , , , under the Literature, Review category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Rolling with the Muses

2013-05-11 17.03.28At the Goethe Institut this evening, to attend the monthly Author Interaction there, there were drinks, and brilliant artists from various fields chatting, arguing, and sharing anecdotes and opinions on each other’s works. This is the whole purpose of the event, it turns out. Poet and novelist Lola Shoneyin, journalist and artist Victor Ehikamenor, journalist and writer Sam Umukoro, and poet and author Kume Ozoro, all sat and read from their works while fielding questions from the very interactive, attentive, active, and articulate audience.

Lola Shoneyin is the author of the famous novel The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, and an evergreen book of feminist poetry So All the While I Was Sitting on an Egg. Victor Ehikamenor is the author of Excuse Me! a collection of anecdotes previously published at 234Next newspapers, and the artist behind Amusing the Muse, an exhibition of drawings and paintings, on till May 31. Sam Umukoro, who worked previously with the Guardian, is the publisher of a website devoted to interviewing famous Nigerian writers, celebrities, and newsmakers. He has also published a book (whose name I have now shamelessly forgotten). The fourth guest, Kume Ozoro, is the author of a collection of private love poems.

2013-05-11 18.34.39Met also, for the first time, a few people with whom I have interacted over the social media for months, and even years. Deji Toye is one of those brilliant rascals, present in most of every cerebral gathering in Lagos, vocal and engaging in each of them sometimes to be mistaken for the host, and effacing enough to miraculously evade capture at crucial moments after the show for a short aside conversation. Until today. An affable man. I also had a chance encounter with Marc, the director of the Institut who sat around through the event and paid great attention to everything going on, sometimes gesticulating to the host to move it forward whenever the subject began to dwell too long on a controversial point. Then, there was Gbemisola, a loyal reader of the blog who surprisingly was able to recognize me out of a crowd, to my pleasant surprise. I also met Sola, a graduate of Theatre at the University of Ibadan who invited me to come see a few of his live theatre workshop/performances in Ikeja which takes place once every month. I intend to, sometime.

2013-05-11 18.27.56

With writer/columnist Bayo Olupohunda much later around Ikoyi, among defiant spirits of the Bogobiri club, dreadlocks woven taut on a couple of heads, we chatted for hours with Swedish journalist Erik Esbjörnsson in town to research the portrayal of women in Nollywood movies – an interest of both himself and Mr. Olupohunda. We talked Nairobi, Uppsala, Eldoret, Germany, and Iowa, beers flowing around the warm glow of the club insides. It is “Marley Day” in Lagos, although, curiously, none of the sounds from the muffled bar speakers played Raggae. Outside, painted on the fences and gate in colourful motifs of the street, are the colours of Lagos, and scrap metals that wear visual arts like fancy clothes. I could as well have been in Fela’s famous Africa Shrine.

It’s night now, and I’m back home, in the arms of Mrs. Tubosun, where I rightly belong.

Rolling with the Muses was published on May 11th, 2013, with the tags , , , , , , , , , under the Art, Fun, Literature category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.