I didn’t think anyone would be interested in my book, says award-winning writer

Were you surprised to win the Etisalat Prize for Literature? I was. Mainly because I had refused to think about possible outcomes. It could have only led to anxiety and I really wanted to enjoy being on the shortlist, doing the book events and meeting readers. By that evening of the main event, the buildup […]

Were you surprised to win the Etisalat Prize for Literature?

I was. Mainly because I had refused to think about possible outcomes. It could have only led to anxiety and I really wanted to enjoy being on the shortlist, doing the book events and meeting readers. By that evening of the main event, the buildup was nerve racking; I don’t think I enjoyed that very much. So yeah, when I heard my name, my eyes probably popped.

And After Many Days is your first novel and with it you became the first Nigerian to win the Etisalat Prize. Do you feel any pressure or expectation now to write an even better book?

No, I don’t feel pressure in the particular way you’ve put it. I want to write the best books I can. I want to write decent sentences and stories that matter to me, and that is a source of daily joy and struggle. I also know it’s futile trying to play to anyone’s expectations. A different set of judges for the Etisalat Prize might have chosen another book as winner, so then what? Do you then decide to write the type of book that has won a prize? Do I want to write a better book? Yes. Has the Prize been a source of encouragement to me as a writer? Yes. It’s also important to note that without any prize, I would still be trying to write my best sentence or story.

How did writing come to you generally? How did you discover writing?

By the time I was nine I had stories in notebooks, complete with designed covers. It’s something I’ve always done. Being in boarding school probably exacerbated my condition. I wrote letters full of longing to my family and friends. I kept journals. It was while in boarding school that writing became a regular activity in my life. But you know everyone wrote then; everyone who read plagasrised the stories they liked best. 

Indeed, they did. What has changed in your life since winning the prize?

My bio now has “Winner of Etisalat Prize for Literature 2016.” I hope the prize has helped to introduce my book to a wider audience. My friends don’t let me complain anymore about being broke, and I think that’s completely unfair. My family is manifestly proud-the key word being “manifestly” as I like to think they have always been proud of what I do. But my winning the prize has given them bragging rights and I’m pleased they have it. 

Speaking about the book itself, it starts off as a crime novel with a child gone missing. And then it settled into a quiet meditation on life in a middle class family. Were you very clearly about the direction of the story from the beginning?

I’m never clear about the direction of my writing. My own task, which is a difficult enough one, is to keep writing and to trust the process. Besides, certainty bores me, it makes me lose interest. I think that every story decides for itself how it wants to be told, that in itself is the story, the how of it.  For me being clear about process has little to do with the cohesion of the story, which is what I think your question is subtly hinting at. 

And After Many Days is very much what I wanted it to be. If some readers find some disturbances in the structure of the story, those are built in and very much part of the work. Whether it succeeds or fails is another matter. There has been all sorts of clamouring about this, which I have found baffling. The structure isn’t unusual at all or daring. It works within a certain tradition. I’m actually happy for readers to have their own opinion about the book, but to be told by a reviewer, as I have been, that something purposefully designed is actually a sort of mistake or oversight makes me think, did you get any of it at all? But then again it never looks good to see writers rise in defense of their work. I wish someone else has written this book then I would have provided a strong defense as an antidote to these noises.

True indeed. Some writers are inspired by events, some by nostalgia. In this book, I felt that you were in a way trying to preserve memories of growing up in the 80s and 90s. What moved you to write this book and at what point did you decide it should be a repository of those early memories?

All of the above for me, and more. And you are completely right. It appears to me now that I used the novel as a repository of memory. Which is not to say all those events actually took place, but rather as a space to reimagine the past. It is a little difficult now to go back to where my head was at when writing this book. There was a lot of nostalgia, longing. It was also at a time where what we call “Niger Delta Militancy” was on the rise; economically, socially and politically, the place I come from was being brought to ruins and I was in mourning. I had hope too. I think the act of writing is in some way to insist on life.

I didn’t think anyone would be interested in this book. It was not the sort of story some people thought I should be writing. Someone whose opinion was supposed to matter asked why I thought readers in Nigeria or anywhere would want to read about rural life or why couldn’t I set the book in Lagos, which, in their opinion, was now what contemporary Nigerian fiction was about. I had only two chapters then, I simply looked away and did exactly what I wanted, and here we are. I hoped it would get published, I wished for it to at least get published, but I told myself I would write something which even if it didn’t get published, I could leave it in my drawer and if I found it in twenty years time, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. 

So I filled the book with things I loved. That was why I was particularly moved when I saw Binyavanga Wainana’s blurb for the book, because even though the story has some dark material, but everyday while I wrote it, I said to myself “I will fill this book with things I love.”

In a subtle way, religion does play a major role in this novel. With Benedict’s fleeting relationship with God and Ma’s constant faith which magnified when she turned to religion to help find her son and the repentant officer at the end. Was there some kind of commentary you wanted to make about Nigerians and their relationship with religion?

I don’t even know if it’s a commentary, or maybe it is. For a book with Nigerian characters, if you want to work in a realist tradition, religion becomes a part of it. We are an overwhelmingly religious country, for better or for worse. I am interested in religion, in the many ways in which people believe and what that might mean.  You will find two people who go to the same place of worship, may have the same level of ostensible adherence to their faith and still act radically different in situations. 

There’s obviously something really deep in us that turns us towards religion, faith, spirituality, whatever we choose to call it. It is one of the ways in which we find meaning in life. I wouldn’t call it commentary, but there are definitely questions asked there. If you claim the core of your life is rooted in religious belief yet your actions betray dubious and unpalatable morality, shouldn’t questions be asked? And it might be useful to clarify here that by morality I mean right or wrong actions, not whether a woman’s skirt is above the knee or whether somebody has tattoos and body piercings. I had a run in with the police once in Port Harcourt. 

They acted in a really abominable way, tried to shake me down for a bribe, they were willing and ready to offer me their special brand of violence, and they also became interested in what congregation I worshipped with. It was a Saturday night and they were all going to be in church the next morning. Of course, the Nigeria Police are an easy target, but really the people who fill our places of worship also occupy different positions in their work lives during the week, from managers, secretaries to gatekeepers, and it’s interesting to see how willingly we use our positions to violate each other. Why?

Good question indeed. But then speaking about the police, the officer at the end of your novel was emboldened to come clean because he had found religion. Did you see any parallels between this incident and the relationship of our politicians with religion?

That’s a troublesome question. My superficial concern was to describe a situation. I’ve seen these things happen. In that specific case the officer coming to confess was rooted in a specific doctrine, and his boldness too, which you mention, is also a result of his action being rooted in religious doctrine; there is a righteous feeling there for him too, I think. It’s not always simple. On one hand we can talk about the ways in which we can act when we can support it by religious doctrine, the ways in which some religious teachings can dull compassion, but also how a lot of compassionate and just behavior can still issue out of religious understanding. I have no interest in decrying what people believe but rather that we be alert about what we consider moral action.

Our politicians and religion is another matter. Our politicians and established religious organizations. Our politicians who have a trail of irresponsible behavior throughout their political lives, swaggering into churches during election season to be prophesied over and blessed by well regarded and well loved religious leaders. We have a long history of this and it is the ugliest thing to witness: how they each roll over, legs in the air, like dogs being tickled. It is quite possible for religious organizations and leaders to be a strong voice for fairness. The civil rights movement in the United States gained a lot its power from the tradition of the black church. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was after all a southern Baptist pastor.

The character of Ajie is the one who ask questions of religion the most. Was there an idea behind empowering him with this curiosity and boldness?

I think most of us have asked questions of religion at some point in our lives. We are not always allowed the boldness, or we are punished for it, terrorized into submission, mainly by our parents. Questions are good. I really believe it, that one of the important ways to understand the world is to first say ‘no’, to query a situation. Of course your parents might slap you; someone might take it upon themselves to kill you, a leader of a place of worship might ostracize you, a politician might hire killers to do away with you. People are really threatened by questions. 

So you see, I wanted to have a character who asked questions and whose parents weren’t threatened by them, even if they had their own formed views. I also wanted to test the limits of their liberal attitude. The power relationship between parent and child is the trickiest and most powerful one. At what point do you snap your finger at the child and say shut up and get into the car now, “Sunday School!” Even as an understanding human being.

One thing I found fascinating about the novel is the depiction of sibling rivalry through the characters of Ajie and Bibi. How important do you think this rivalry was in shaping the individuals they both grow up to be?

I don’t know if I can answer that. I’m asking these questions myself.

It has become the norm for books set in the Niger Delta to touch on the impact of oil companies in those communities. How important do you think literature is in giving voice to this agitations or raising awareness of environmental issues in the Niger Delta?

Literature is made of things in life. There is nothing else we have to make literature. All these things mentioned above are in life and therefore worthy subjects of literature. I don’t know about “giving voice to agitation”. A more effective way of doing that would be more overt political actions like protest, lobbying, pamphleteering, arguing, voting, boycotting products, pressuring government, everything humanly possible apart from say killing ourselves.

Your writing is lush and measured. Is this born out of some kind of writerly influence and what writers might this be? 

For the sake of an intelligible answer, I will say my writing comes from all the writers I’ve read and loved, all the stories I listened to as child and the stories I listen to now. My writing comes from the shape of my own brain. I read all kinds of people and have had intense periods of loving particular writers. I love writing that pays attention to language, I love restraint and I enjoy baroque writing, it has to be good, or in fact, I have to like it. Faulkner was really important to me, never mind I haven’t read him now in years. Coetzee, Jamaica Kincaid, Donald Barthelme, Ian McEwan. Femi Osofisan’s poetry was my life blood for years. 

His collection, Minted Coin, which was published under the pseudonym Okinba Launko…that slim book went everywhere with me. I may have even read it while on an Okada. The King James Bible, The New King James Bible, The New International version has its charm and magic but it’s ultimately of a lower order. Chimamanda Adichie is masterful. In some of her short stories you really witness the beauty of her language, the power and subtlety of her thought, her psychological acuity. She makes serious attempts to capture something that is true. 

There has been a lot of buzz about contemporary fiction produced by your generation of writers. What do you think is responsible for this convergence of exciting works and writers?

I don’t know, but we welcome it. There are so many stories to be told.  We need them all.

Finally, is there another book in the works or is there a long wait for your readers?

I would like to end this on a light note and answer in typically Nigerian fashion: (sigh) we are praying to God.