With ‘Godhunter,’ Suyi Davies Okungbowa delivers tales of African deities

David Mogo lives between worlds. The sardonic narrator and title character of Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s novel, “David Mogo, Godhunter,” is of mixed parentage: part human and part orisha, a deity revered in Okungbowa’s native Nigeria. But, as David reminds readers repeatedly, he isn’t “half of anything.” Rather, he’s a mix of human foibles and supernatural […]

David Mogo lives between worlds. The sardonic narrator and title character of Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s novel, “David Mogo, Godhunter,” is of mixed parentage: part human and part orisha, a deity revered in Okungbowa’s native Nigeria.

But, as David reminds readers repeatedly, he isn’t “half of anything.” Rather, he’s a mix of human foibles and supernatural talents stumbling through a postapocalyptic West Africa.

David’s story takes place after “The Falling,” when the orishas of legend suddenly appeared in Lagos, devastating its way of life. “Godhunter” follows him on something of a hero’s journey. In burnt-out stadiums and abandoned airports, he fights supernatural entities intent on the destruction of the people he loves, while trying to make peace with his own strange magic.

Like his protagonist, Okungbowa’s debut exists between realms. “Godhunter” shifts smoothly from David’s wry narration in English to conversations in Pidgin, the interethnic vernacular of Nigeria. Its plot unfolds at real Lagos landmarks and features several orishas drawn from Yoruba cosmology.

In one scene, David quotes “We Should All Be Feminists” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – but he also faces dangerous magic and lives in a version of the Nigerian capital whose only functional government body is the Lagos State Paranormal Commission. His story switches nimbly between postapocalyptic dystopia, fantasy and horror.

It’s a fitting approach to genre for Okungbowa, who describes himself as a “patchwork person.” The son of two professors, he grew up in a conservative city in southern Nigeria with a not particularly intellectual reputation and moved repeatedly in search of a place that felt more like home.

His work engages with that at-sea feeling, focusing on middles and people or places “in between.” Okungbowa found himself navigating new middle ground with “Godhunter.”

“I grew up reading stories about gods and heroes,” he says. “None of it featured places or people that I knew.”

“Godhunter” began as an attempt to bring those stories home for his fellow Nigerians. But once he sold the book, Okungbowa had to consider the possibility that it might be some readers’ first encounter with West Africa. He struggled to balance the explanations and introductions an outsider might need for a story set in Lagos with the urgency of writing something specifically for his own community.

That meant walking a fine line in his treatment, not just of the city’s neighborhoods but also its gods – since it was now just as possible that a worshiper of the warrior orisha, Ogun, might read the book as someone who had never heard of him. The result is a narrative infused with a deep otherworldliness that allows Okungbowa to gender-swap some orishas while also portraying them with care and precision. (The orishas don’t seem to mind: A few devotee readers have written to tell Okungbowa that the deities they worship enjoyed the book.)

He remains mindful of the cost of writing for outsiders. “It becomes a question of how much you subtract from yourself in order to make yourself palatable,” he says – especially as part of a historically white genre where African worlds and characters are relatively new. In an industry with entrenched ideas about which stories deserve attention, he asks himself: “What’s ‘good enough’ to present on a global scale but is still unashamedly you?”

With “Godhunter,” Okungbowa is participating in a cultural moment, as Americans devour the action of “Black Panther” and the magic of “Children of Blood and Bone.”

It’s understandable, he says. “Part of fantasy is exoticism. It’s a hunger for something that’s different from what you know.” When a story focuses on places Americans know little about, like West Africa, that fantasy becomes even more attractive.

Source: Datebook