I think all writing is political – Helon Habila

It’s not easy, it’s not easy, but the good thing is that I have an office, once in a while I escape to the office to write. And there is also a neighbourhood library [in Virginia, US] and that’s where I spend most of my free time. And then of course sometimes in the night, […]

It’s not easy, it’s not easy, but the good thing is that I have an office, once in a while I escape to the office to write. And there is also a neighbourhood library [in Virginia, US] and that’s where I spend most of my free time. And then of course sometimes in the night, I go into the bedroom and write. You know, when you want to write, you always make time, you always find a way to do it, but it’s not easy. It takes a lot of artful dodging.

At what point did you make up your mind to become a writer?

I don’t think there is any point I could point to and say this is when I decided to become a writer. It is something that grows on you but I decided to go to university and study literature when I was 17. I finished secondary school when I was 15, or was it 14, I don’t know. I read sciences back then so I had to sit down and read books for JAMB and I was able to do it. So around that time, when I was 17, that was when I decided to go to university and study English or literature, that must have been when I decided I want to be a writer but I was already reading a lot. I had even written a novel in long hand because I was at home for a long time. I was home for like two years, so I wrote a novel, lots of poems. That was when the writer in me began to emerge.

What eventually happened to the novel?

It’s still there. Still there in my mother’s house. But I was able to publish a chapter from it which I presented as a short story. It was published in an anthology called Rule After Tears. I think it came out in 1992 and was edited by a guy called Chidi Nganga and the publishing company is called Lamida Publishing, it is there in Kaduna. So that’s it. That was my first published short story when I was in my second year in the university.

So what informed the crossover from the sciences to the arts?

I don’t think I ever consciously wanted to read the sciences. What was happening then in the 1980s was that they were encouraging people to read sciences. So as long as you were above average they just sent you to a science secondary school, it’s not like we made a choice, we were sent there. I graduated of course and I even passed some of them but my mind was not there. So I went to university for one year remedial and I was not even going to class because I just couldn’t see the relevance. That was when I dropped out and went home for two years, to sort of reorient myself. Then I went into the arts and everything made sense. Everything fell into place.

Do you still remember what it felt like wining the Caine Prize?

What can I say? I was happy. That was the biggest thing that has ever happened to me as a writer. It was almost unexpected, even though I had written the story I knew it was a good story, you are never prepared for that kind of prize and it was on a very big stage with the BBC there, people, writers; Nurudin Farah, Ben Okri, and you were the one that was being called to make a speech and collect a prize. It was a very big stage.

Did you realise the import winning that award would have on Nigerian literature as a whole?

Actually, that wasn’t on my mind at that time. I was looking at it from my own perspective as a writer, not as a representative of Nigerian literature or something, I guess as it turned out it was a symbolic thing for a generation as we were just emerging from the dark days of the dictatorship and people were beginning to have hope and possibilities. At that moment that was the farthest thing on my mind.

So at what moment did you realise that the award had rekindled interest in Nigerian literature?

Well, I saw the papers, I read the reports about it, the way people were talking about it and even the president at the time, [Olusegun] Obasanjo, sent me a letter. So it was at that moment that I began to realise the import of that achievement and of course the weight of it and all the problems and of course thejoy that came with it. And I was the arts editor of the Vanguard at the time so there was a lot of coverage for it. I had never been that exposed in my life.

So how does it feel being at the vanguard of a new generation of Nigerian writers?

It doesn’t make writing any easier, it doesn’t make anything easier, it doesn’t make your books sell any faster or anything. You just do what you have always done. You just have to write your books and sit down and re-write, to work hard, that’s all. There is no point where, as a writer you say I have reached where I want to reach. There is no point, there is always the next book to write and it is not going to be any easier than the last book.

What inspires your writing?

The books I read, my family, my life; so many things. I guess there was a time when I could point at one thing and say this is what inspires me but one has gone into a routine, it has become a part of you. I just do it. It could be something political that happens, it could a book that I read, or if maybe a publisher approaches me and say write on specific thing; like I am working on a book in Lagos now. It was proposed to me by Granta. You know, all sorts of things. Once you are in the profession, there is always something to write about and it doesn’t have to be special but I am always concerned about common political issues, issues of history, issues that concern Africa. These are the things I always find myself writing about.

So do you consider yourself a political writer?

 I think all writing is political. But one won’t define oneself as a political writer because that would mean writing political pamphlets and incendiary articles in newspapers. But I like to look at things from the political angles and analyze it in a political light because politics is about man’s relationship with man whether it is exploitative or illegal and that’s what we have in this country and you can’t ignore that. You can’t turn away from here. If you were born here and you grew up here you would know these and the potential we have and where we are supposed to be and we are not, you are worried and you can’t just escape writing about that.

You have never been to prison and yet you have written convincingly about prison.  What inspired the interest?

I just used prison as a metaphor, as a setting, it’s just a place but also as a metaphor for the times we were living in, the 1990s, when there was so much lack of freedom. So I situate the story in prison to show that that was what we were experiencing at the time, even though all of us were not in a prison, psychologically that was what we were experiencing.  So that was a metaphoric use of prison as a space, unfreedom,  if you like.

So comparing that period with now, 10 years after, what would you say?

So much has changed. I think there is more freedom now. There are more writers writing openly, you know, before, if you could remember, we couldn’t even get published. We could only get published on the pages of newspapers and we could only publish poems. Things were hard and people could be arrested for nothing, you know, Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged. So, things have changed drastically; gradually not dramatically and I think the gradual steps are the best when we take things step by step. I think we will get there. I see more publishing houses coming up and doing good work, I see more public readings, I see more people being interested in matters of the mind, intellectual matters. Of course there are the anti-intellectuals, the crass materialist and all that, but on the other hand you have resurgence of interest in intellectual matters. If you look at the Fidelity Writing Workshop, ten years ago this wouldn’t have happened. They might have been sponsoring the birthday party of one military officer’s wife or something as their corporate social responsibility.

What books have had the greatest influence on you?

A lot, a lot. Shakespeare, Achebe, Soyinka, J.M Coetzee [Fyodor] Dostoyevsk, so many. You know, the good thing about being a writer is that your reading list expands and each book you read, at least the good ones, have something for you, it could be this one for use of language, this one for content and so on. There is always something to admire about books.

Have you read Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”?

Yes, I have.

Are there any similarities between his novel and “Measuring Time” being that he somewhat told the history of his country in that novel, some say his continent even and you tried doing the same in your novel?

Yes, there was that attempt. There was that conscious attempt. So maybe thematically, yes, but stylistically, no.

You happen to be a poet as well.

Yeah, I write poetry.

You are better known as a novelist but your poetry is good.

I know (laughs)

So which one are you more comfortable writing, prose or poetry?

I don’t know. It depends on what I am working on at the moment. There are things that I better express in poetic form and there are things I am more comfortable when I am writing in fiction form. So it depends on inspiration, it depends on so many things. And I can’t tell you when exactly I will write poetry or on what I will write poetry. It depends on how I feel at that moment. I guess I tend to write poetry on more personal issues like my family and things like that.

What do you see of the future of Nigerian writing?

Things are getting better and better. Nigerian literature is beginning to emerge as a distinct, identifiable literature. People will talk about Nigerian novels, not just African novels and they can mention names that have stood tall not just locally but internationally. So Nigerian literature has really distinguished itself and it is good. It is getting better.

And what about your popularity, your novels are being translated into all sorts of languages, how does that make you feel?

I don’t know, it’s just part of the publication process (laughs). You know, if you have good agents who have been able to interest others in translating it into their languages.