Bolaji Olatunde Speaks

  Abubakar Adam Adamu has blessed the world with a remarkable novel. The human mind has always been fascinated by the premise of returning to life, to fulfil whatever purpose, or lack thereof sometimes; this fascination is closely interlinked with belief in the afterlife. Reincarnation has many versions across cultures around the world. When We Were Fireflies is an examination of the concept through northern Nigerian eyes. Yarima Lalo, a young man, a painter with his studio on Kolda Street, off Adetokunbo Ademola Crescent, Abuja, on which is located some of the costliest real estate in Nigeria’s capital city, although the novel does not hint at or suggest that. To himself, he has always been an ordinary person, until one Friday “on a hot June day in Abuja…it occurred to him that once, many years before, he had been murdered in the carriage of an old locomotive with the well-worn seaweed-green seats.” With this prepossessing opening, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim pulls the reader into Lalo’...

  Now, I get an inkling why Abdulrazak Gurnah got the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is a beautiful novel, Gravel Heart, and is also the first Gurnah title I have read.  "I don't know why you want to study literature. I don’t know where this idea came from. It’s a pointless subject.” This statement by Uncle Amir, said to the protagonist, Salim Masud Yahya, when he admits that he had no business studying finance in the university, sent me into hysterics. Every African literature student must have encountered this argument at one point in their careers. At some other point, the narrator says, “What is the point of literature? I think that the person who asks that question will not find my answer convincing.”  The unspoken family secret that simultaneously unsettles and binds Salim’s maternal extended family is treated with such sensitivity and adequate suspense, as only a skilled writer can, and should.  Salim’s migration to the United Kingdom forms the major part of t...

Aha! Welcome to the child-soldier-fiction-fest that is Allah is Not Obliged. It was first published in 2000; I first read it in 2023. As I read it, those tropes I’d seen in Hollywood movies about war-torn regions in Africa – fiction and nonfiction alike – started to come alive. I am not sure the effect this novel by Ahmadou Kourouma had on those Hollywood stories about the continent’s troubled zones, but Allah is Not Obliged is a powerful novel. As the ten year old narrator, the “fearless, blameless, street kid, the small soldier’ (read “boy soldier”) Birahima, says, “Allah is not obliged to be fair about all things he does here on earth.” A fatalistic outlook on life that one has to adopt to survive the crazy. Birahima takes on a heart-stopping and heart-rending. It’s filled with zany characters, from fraudsters to sex abusers to mass murdering warlords. I assume it’s one of those novels that, rightly or wrongly, made the child soldier the face of Africa back in the noughties in popul...

  A fascinating thriller with a unique perspective on Nigerian crime fiction. Dr Phillip Taiwo, Nigerian-born investigative psychologist, and former employee of the San Francisco Police Department, has gone against the popular trend. He has returned to Nigeria from the United States of America, with his family, Professor Folake Taiwo, his wife (“the youngest professor at the University of Lagos”), and their teenage children. Phillip is contracted by Emeka Nwamadi, owner of National Bank, “one of Nigeria’s three largest banks” to unravel the circumstances leading to the murder his son, Kevin Nwamadi, law student of the State University in Okriki, Rivers State, Nigeria. Kevin was murdered along with two other male students in a mob action, after they were accused of being armed robbers — the type Nigerians popularly call “jungle justice”. The novel has the typical twists and turns worthy of a good thriller. There were thought-provoking observations on the Nigerian condition, which I ...

  I am of the considered opinion that alternative methods of publishing are very worthy alternatives to traditional publishing. Like the advertisements from many self-publishing outfits state (it’s almost like they copy that from one other), it was done by authors who went on to have glittering literary careers – names like Hemmingway, Grisham, get bandied about. So, one finds oneself in good company, in a manner of speaking. These guys were once “anybody” before they became “somebody”. I often tell anyone who will listen – an ideal world is one in which everyone writes and we all read what the other writes. It would be a better world because the perspectives available for inspection would be so immense, and it would probably broaden understanding, although the hate shared on social media seems to cast doubts on this supposition because it is one of the models for exploring such a possibility. However, we are made aware that such views exist, however unsavoury they are. Writing ...