The Shadow Of A Smile

The story: Meet Zuba, a young Biochemistry graduate with dreams of undertaking a PhD (told you Nigerians need 10 characters minimum after their surname). He has a huge “kee-loid” scar on his forhead due to an unfortunate accident eons ago which claimed the lives of his mother and younger brother. He is totally obsessed with this keloid of his, it  acts a conduit through which Zuba expresses his varying levels of stress through various means such as rubbing, stroking, fingering, you-get-the-picture. He also has a penchant for novels featuring other such scarred characters.

His father, Professor Maduekwe sets up a secondary school and welcomes into his employment, the devil and his advocate aka Mrs Egbetuyi and her husband. Professor Maduekwe falls ill and it is left to Zuba to take the reins and make sure daddy’s efforts aren’t in vain. A seemingly trivial series of events cause Zuba to order the dismissal of the fiendish Egbetuyis. They’re having none of it and demand a gargantuan payout if he wants them to leave the premises in peace. The principled Zuba refuses and Mr Ebgetuti swears to see to it that Zuba pays for this transgression. After this, things appear to spiral out of control. Zuba is arrested on trumped  up charges of armed robbery and manhandling of the Egbetuyis and goes from the police cell to a prison. The situation is dire. The conditions that the prisoners are forced to live in are beyond belief. Actually, they aren’t, this is Nigeria after all… Honestly though, I was horrified. Zuba is exonerated in the end and the Egbetuyis get their just deserts.

Rewa’s take on things: This review will be short because I found this novel moderately enjoyable. That I found it enjoyable at all was due to my partiality to African literature. It isn’t that there is something drastically wrong with Ozumba’s writing style, nothing particularly askew with the story etc. I think that for me, I found the protagonist incredibly lacklustre and spineless. Perhaps it would have been more interesting if the story had been focussed on Zuba’s less-privileged cohort, Ike. Oh well.

I believe the novel offered some insight into the judicial system in Nigeria, the despicable state of our prisons and the consequences of bribery and nepotism.

Towards the end, the story became increasingly farcical and I found the ending a bit of an anti-climax. Even though there was a build-up to Zuba’s eventual release, when it did come, I felt sort of deflated. It just seemed too sudden and easy. By the end of the novel, I had just about had it with Zuba’s keloid-stroking and thoughts-about-nothing-but-keloid. The descriptions and characters felt elementary and shallow; Kachi has a remarkable inability to explore more diverse similes and modes of communication. He relies on repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. Get the picture? Like, enough already *does American cheerleader voice*.

I believe at the heart of Ozumba’s novel was the take-home message of unfailing hope and triumph amidst unrelenting adversity. However, this bride did not make it past my threshold. If anything, having read about Zuba’s horrific experiences as a result of his insistence on holding on tight to the reigns of his high horse, I would be more inclined to let go of the proverbial reins and dabble in a bit of the system’s venality.

Actually, the only thing Ozumba achieved with this novel, was wasting half an hour of my lover’s life  with which he spent traipsing around the streets of London in search of this novel for me (kindle let me down you see). Half an hour that could have been better spent showering me with hugs and kisses *does Kanye shrug*.

While I must admit that this particular review of mine has been slap-dash, this was because I was so uninspired by the shallow characters and dull cadence of story-telling which both substantiate the low rating I have given this book.

Anthills Of The Savannah

The story: I won’t dwell too much on trying to explain the story to you my fellow readers for two reasons. One, I hope that you have already read this wonderful book and two, it is far too difficult to summarise a story as thought-provoking and multi-faceted as this one in a few paragraphs. It is far too all-encompassing. In a nutshell, it follows four main characters, His Excellency, Sam, who rules the fictional country of Kangan (an allegory for Nigeria I believe). Chris Oriko, the Commisioner of Information, Beatrice Okoh, Secretary of Finance and Chris’s girlfriend and Ikem Osodi, editor of the National Gazette newspaper. Elewa, another noteworthy character is Ikem’s pidgin English-speaking, fiery girlfriend. Chris, Ikem and Sam were former classmates.

Sam has Ikem “fatally wounded”, these words specifically used to misdirect the masses, when Ikem is arrested in his home for supposedly engaging in a coup. Prior to this, Chris and Ikem seemed to be on the path to reviving their strained friendship though a communal fear and dislike for Sam. After learning of Ikem’s “fatal wound”, Chris goes into hiding and the faeces hits the fan.

Some of the mastery of Anthills Of The Savannah so powerful is the way in which Achebe oscillates between first person narratives of Ikem (a few hard-hitting poems thrown in here and there), Chris and Beatrice and switches to third person for the denouement. In this way, we are aware of the maelstrom into which the characters have been thrown but we still aren’t ready for the volcanic eruption that is the state of affairs in Kangan.

 Rewa’s take on things: In keeping with Things Fall Apart and No Longer At Ease, Achebe runs the aftermath of colonialism and ever prevailing political corruption. Of the three novel, Anthills Of The Savannah, although very powerful and masterfully written, has been my least favourite. I don’t know why. Achebe’s prose is as intelligent, succinct and commendable as ever but I found it so difficult to engage with the story or the characters. This could have something to do with the fact that I was down with a cold and trying to liberate my nasal passages and concentrate at the same time!

Chris I found to be sanctimonious, Ikem who seemed to suffer from chronic weltschmerz, His Excellency a general weakling who sought to make scape-goats out of those that he deemed a threat to his illusionary authority. As for Beatrice, I couldn’t identify with her as a woman, Desdemona complex and all. Elewa was probably my favourite, I loved reading her pidgin English. I found her brave, amenable and unpretentious.

From the beginning, Achebe sets the tone for what the novel will be about. He reflects on the state of affairs in Kangan through Chris’s words, “…looking back on the last two years it should be possible to point to a decisive event and say: it was at such and such a point that everything went wrong and the rules were suspended. But I have not found such a moment or such a cause…”. The rest of the novel sets about on a journey which shows the reader that there is no one cause for the plight of Kangan but rather, as the old axiom goes, one things leads to another. We see that a confluence of interwoven and seemingly inconsequential events trigger off a ticking time bomb. Ikem uses the magazine as  a vehicle through which his own voice and opinion can be heard but he is ousted, set up and silenced. Chris’s demise soon follows suit whilst he is on the run, although his own death was avoidable.

What is interesting about the progression of the novel is that as the men fall, the women emerge and commandeer the ruins the men have left behind. Elewa gives birth to the late Ikem’s baby girl. Elewa’s elderly uncle is  late to the naming ceremony and so against the grain of deeply entrenched customary traditions, the women name the child and a typically male name at that. I read two things into this. Firstly, that the elders were late and unable to perform their duty suggested to me that Achebe was alluding to the fact that in order for change to become manifest, fresh blood, untainted by fossil ideologies and corruption. The second thing was the position of women in society, this was touched upon in the novel in a dialogue between Ikem and Beatrice.

Achebe wants you to see that Nigerians, Africans in general, accepted the subjugation from the colonialists all too readily, that they did not put up a fight. And now, they still allow this to continue, under dictators and such parodists. They are complicit in their own shame. Anthills Of The Savannah tells you that African society needs to be integrated, with women as important as men, and equality amongst all classes.  

Irrespective of my feelings towards the characters, I am in awe of Achebe. I found myself highlighting so many paragraphs in my kindle to return to just so I could re-capture the sheer brilliance of his writing. I would read some passages and think to myself, how does one sit and write such? He is one gifted man and anyone who studies English literature needs to read every single one of this man’s novels. Unlike the much hailed Salman Rushdie, Achebe makes no pretences (some people will probably want to lynch me for berating Rushdie but hey, my opinion). His writing is simple, adroit and so elegant. That Booker Prize was well deserved indeed.