My novel is a love story to Lagos –Toni Kan

Weekend Magazine: After years of waiting, your second book The Carnivorous City has been published to great acclaim and fanfare. Should we attribute the long time it took for the book to come out to the fact that you are distracted by other pursuits or to an artistic commitment to write an excellent book? Toni […]

Weekend Magazine: After years of waiting, your second book The Carnivorous City has been published to great acclaim and fanfare. Should we attribute the long time it took for the book to come out to the fact that you are distracted by other pursuits or to an artistic commitment to write an excellent book?

Toni Kan: When I sit to write, my first impulse is to get up. I am often and easily distracted. But the truth is, I was scared of bringing out a new book after the monstrous success of Nights of the Creaking Bed. That collection of short stories had assumed a life of its own and made me quite popular and notorious. I was scared of being seen as a one trick pony even though my novella, Ballad of Rage, was critically acclaimed and got on the inaugural NLNG shortlist. So, there was fear which then meant I had to focus on producing an excellent book. To show how, I finished the second draft of The Carnivorous City in 2013, I think. I entered it for the Kwani manuscript prize where it came third and then I didn’t touch it for two full years. When I got back to it, I chopped off bits and pieces like it wasn’t even mine. One more thing is, I was supposed to deliver a short story collection, Infidelity, first. It is basically ready.  So, I was, in effect, writing two books at the same time. And don’t forget that in that period I also ghost-wrote four biographical books. So I have been busy.

WM: Indeed you have been busy but we are relieved the book finally came out. But how different was the writing experience for you between this and your last book, Night of the Creaking Bed, considering that one is a short story collection and the other is a novel? Was there a significant difference in the writing process? 

Kan: The fundamental difference is that one is a collection of short stories and the other is a novel. That said, both took time to write. It was work. I think some of the stories in Nights were written 12 years apart. 

WM: Focusing on The Carnivorous City, this is a novel in which Lagos, as a city, becomes a character. What informed this choice? What is it about Lagos that has inspired artists to rave about it?

Kan: Lagos is both muse and distraction. It attracts us like moths to a flame. There is always that element of danger, that frisson of excitement that keeps the pulse racing. I have lived here for about 25 years and have gone from anxiety to calm; from hate to love. It has defined who I am today. The Carnivorous City is me writing a love song to my favourite city, Lagos.

WM: The Lagos that comes through in this novel as one that is vibrant and dangerous, carnivorous, if you like. However it is not only Lagos but the characters as well and for me characters like Dr. Nicole and Santos trying to profit from Soni’s fate says a lot about the people who inhabit the space that Lagos is. How much of this portrayal would you say is real and what experiences informed these portrayals?

Kan: All of it is real. Lagos is a cocktail of the good and the bad. You don’t get half measures and if you live here for a few years and stay perceptive you will notice and see things that will astound. Lagos is one city where real life trumps fiction. Most of what I wrote; the characters and stories are real life Lagos scenarios and people. It is an endlessly fascinating city. Let me tell you a story that I took out of the book. One night my cousin’s wife was going to pick him from the airport. On her way, this was about 7pm, armed robbers flung a car wheel at her windscreen. It made impact, she reacted badly, lost control and fell about 10 feet into a ditch. Someone saw her, went in there, stole her bag and left her to bleed to death. He or she was lucky, she was unlucky. This is Lagos.

WM: That is such a tragic story.The entire novel is hinged on the disappearance of Soni.  How common an occurrence is it for Lagos big boys to disappear?

Kan: The story of Lagos is one of constant disappearances, both literal and metaphorical. A few days ago, my colleagues and I were recalling names of Lagos big boys who held sway a few years ago, who were fixtures in the society pages, whom we never even hear of again. They are gone, swallowed whole by Lagos.

WM: Interestingly, Soni is the centre of the novel yet he is missing in it. But because he is such a powerful figure, his influence is felt all through the book. What meanings can one read into this, especially considering that institutions in this country are centred around powerful individuals who are often not ‘on seat’ to use the common euphemism?

Kan: Soni was fully on seat o. Two Nollywood directors who have read the book want to make movies even though one says the breadth of the narrative means it will cost an arm and a leg. We have been talking about how Soni will be represented and my idea is that we will hear his voice but not see his face. He is such a larger-than-life figure. I wanted to make him ‘omnipresent’ even though physically absent. It was tough achieving that delicate balance but I am happy it worked because I get this question a lot.

WM: What kind of censorship, or to what extent did you have to hold yourself back in depicting the relationship between Ada and her brother-in-law, Abel, which threatened to go out of control all through the novel?

Kan: Let’s not say censorship. I would rather say control. In holding back the inevitable, the tension ratcheted up notches higher and that was good for the narrative. But when you say hold yourself, you make it sound like I am Abel. Haba!

WM: I wouldn’t dare make that mistake. How unusual would you say this relationship is among in-laws?

Kan: Nothing is unusual in life. Nothing!

WM: How long did it take for you to write this book? 

Kan: If I say 15 years, it will sound as if I am a lazy bugger. But what happened is I have wanted to write a Lagos novel since 1999. I wrote one. It was called The Fourth Cousin. I sent it in as my sample for the Heinrich Boll fellowship. I got the fellowship but when I arrived Germany to begin re-working the novel I realised I had committed a big crime. I had done what most writers writing Lagos novels had done; written about the city from one perspective – the mainland. Lagos novels are often written from one perspective – The Island as in Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come or The Mainland as in Cyprian Ekwensi’s People of the City. I wanted to write a book that will merge both halves. It took me 15 years to achieve in terms of thinking about it, writing, lazing, writing and lazing some more. The character of Soni has a foot in both worlds.

WM: Fifteen years is a long time. I hope your next book doesn’t take that long. Now as a busy person who has so much going on, how do you detach in order to pursue your passion? 

Kan: I don’t sleep. 

WM:  When did you discover that for you writing was the calling? What were the circumstances and the defining moments that led you to this point?

Kan: I was 11. My father sent me three books, for my birthday, from the Longman Drumbeat series – Cross of Gold by Lauretta Ngcobo, The Last Duty by Isidore Okpewho and Flowers and Shadows by Ben Okri. I started reading early as a boy and must have read about 100 books by then but after I read Ben Okri, I was affected in a way no book had ever affected me before. I was crying for Jeffia and his mum and their altered circumstances. I wanted to write such a story that someone would read and cry.

WM: Was there any moment in your life when you felt that perhaps writing was not for you?

Kan: Never. Once I started I knew this was it even though I was planning to be a doctor. The moment friends started paying me to write poems for their girlfriends and I began winning awards and travelling around the world, I knew this was it, the mother lode.

WM: You have been critical of the influence of social media on the writing sphere, or on some young writers. Do you think writing is under threat from digital media and social media or do you think these are just temporary distractions?

Kan: What I am critical of is the lack of mediation and the annoying mutual admiration society-ness of it all. Someone writes crap – all his crappy friends like it and he thinks himself a writer. The editor/editing process is gone because of the immediacy of social media which speeds up the time between conceiving and consuming a piece. It is worrisome.

WM: Worrisome indeed. Do you think that your history with Hints magazine has set the template for expectations from your readers, does it put pressure on you to deliver a certain kind of story or does it challenge you to do something different?

Kan: There is absolutely no pressure. There really is no way to say it. Hints magazine had over 30 writers in its time. How many have gone ahead to have literary careers? Only two, Toni Kan and Helon Habila. So why this fixation? I think it’s because I did a damn good job as a “romance writer” and it is an appellation I wear with pride. But enough already.

WM: You have also been nicknamed Mayor of Lagos. Can you tell us how this title came about?

Kan: I am not even sure how. I think the title came from either of two rascals: Dr. Dami Ajayi or Onyeka Nwelue. Those two are crazy. Beware of them. (Laughter)