I was embarrassed when dubbed Achebe’s heir – Obioma

Chigozie Obioma was long-listed for the 2015 Guardian First Book Award and recently short-listed for The Man Booker Prize for his debut novel ‘The Fishermen’. He is currently a Creative Writing professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the United States of America. Here, he talks about how he felt embarrassed being dubbed Chinua Achebe’s […]

Chigozie Obioma was long-listed for the 2015 Guardian First Book Award and recently short-listed for The Man Booker Prize for his debut novel ‘The Fishermen’. He is currently a Creative Writing professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the United States of America. Here, he talks about how he felt embarrassed being dubbed Chinua Achebe’s heir, his take on reviews and more
Bookshelf: Months ago you were a writer with an intriguing book that got multiple reviews. How do you feel about being short-listed for the Man Booker Prize?
Chigozie Obioma: The news about the short-list came to me as an ecstatic, cerebral jab on the mind. It is imponderably satisfying, delightful, and wholly encouraging. I had merely hoped, at the onset of work, to merely get published. To be nominated to awards is, to say the least, completely unexpected, but humbling, nonetheless.
Bookshelf: Did you expect you will make it to this point?
Obioma: I think it would be very presumptuous for a writer, any writer, to “expect” to make it to any award list, not to mention the Man Booker Prize. I definitely didn’t; as I said, I had only hoped to get published.
Bookshelf: Percy Zvomuya who reviewed your novel claims you were shortlisted to meet the African quota rather than literary merit. What do you have to say about that?
Obioma: I don’t read what people have to say about my book. Reviews are for readers, not the author. He is entitled to his opinions. That said, his opinion doesn’t make much sense to me. If the Booker Prize committee did have a quota system, wouldn’t there be an African on the short-list more frequently? The last time a Black African was short-listed was in 1991. The novel is also on the short-list for several other awards, so are those other award committees also operating according to a quota system?
Bookshelf: What was running through your mind before you put down the first word that became ‘The Fishermen’?
Obioma: A lot of things? I was thinking about familial relationships, and the dynamics of fraternal bond. I was thinking about fathers and sons, and about mothers and daughters. I was thinking about the power of consanguinity, and the crisis of unity in many world societies. I was thinking about the paradox that is Nigeria. I was thinking about blood in all the complexities of it. I was thinking about myth, of what becomes truth, or absoluteness and lightness, of the mundane and the ethereal, of tragedies-Greek, Aristotelian, Shakespearian, which is to say that my mind becomes a harlot once I sit on my desk to write.
Bookshelf: Your book’s sales have skyrocketed in England, where the Booker Prize is awarded. How would you describe its level of success so far?
Obioma: It is intriguing and humbling indeed. I’m quite delighted about it.
Bookshelf: You are now a first-year creative writing professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. What is the experience like?
Obioma: It is fun, totally exciting to have the opportunity to impact a few minds interested in fiction writing and Literature. I’m taking every moment of it with delight. But also, of course, there is the difficulty that grading and working through hours of students’ paperworks present to the teacher. But isn’t that the thrill of it all?
Bookshelf: What writers and books influenced your development as a writer?
Obioma: I was fascinated by the works of Amos Tutuola, especially the first African novel in English, ‘The Palm Wine Drinkard’. Since Nigeria was once a British child, I had relatively easy access to the works of British masters like Shakespeare, Milton, John Bunyan, and many others whom I loved. But amongst this gallery of faces, I found extreme delight in Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’urbervilles’, which, even now, I still regard as the masterwork of the 19th century literature. But most of all, I found a stronger affinity with the works of African writers, and these writers made strong impressions on me as a child: Chinua Achebe, for ‘Arrow of God’, a harrowing, sweeping novel; Wole Soyinka, for ‘The Trials of Brother Jero’; Cyprian Ekwensi, for ‘An African Night’s Entertainment’; Camara Laye, for ‘The African Child’, and D.O Fagunwa, for ‘Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irumole’, which I read in its original Yoruba version. And lastly, I devoured and was fascinated with mythology, the Greek myths. I read Homer’s The Odyssey at age fourteen, over the course of three months because the library at my school could not let me take it out. 
Bookshelf: The New York Times dubbed you as ‘the heir to legendary Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, which is like calling an American author the next Ernest Hemingway. What are your thoughts on that?
Obioma: I was somewhat embarrassed about that dubbing. Achebe was a glorious writer who helped shape African fiction as we know it today. More so, he helped birth so many writers through his African Writer’s Series. For anyone to purport to wear his garment is pretty audacious, at least for a first book. I don’t think I’m thinking in those lines right now. But if the New York Times mention helps get the book to readers’ attention, then it is a great thing.
Bookshelf: You are 28 years old and likely to be the youngest who has ever won The Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious fiction awards in the world. How do you view such a prospect?
Obioma: We will wait and see what happens on October 13 even if the odds are stacked high enough. But I hope I win.
Bookshelf: You are working on your second novel already. What ideas are you exploring?
Obioma: It is still very embryonic, and does not lend itself to descriptions and analyses as yet. To attempt that would be meaningless at this stage.