One of the most remarkable literary ­developments of the past decade has been the more or less simultaneous eruption onto the world stage, after a long fallow period, of nearly a dozen popular new novelists from Africa. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, NoViolet Bulawayo, Teju Cole, Alain Mabanckou and Dinaw Mengestu are all young African writers who have worked in America. Many teach at or are graduates of creative writing schools, institutions that are sometimes scorned for being literary factories. Yet these writers’ voices, anything but undistinguished, are as distinct as the African countries they come from, whether Nigeria in the west, Zimbabwe in the south or Ethiopia in the east.

And the flood shows no sign of slowing. Last fall, a first novel by a 33-year-old Cameroonian, Imbolo Mbue, reportedly sold at the Frankfurt Book Fair for a million dollars. That book, “The Longings of Jende Jonga,” will not be published before 2016. Meanwhile, this year’s most promising African newcomer may well prove to be Chigozie Obioma. An Ibo, like Nigeria’s best-known novelist, Chinua Achebe, Obioma was born in southwestern Nigeria and has recently joined the faculty at the University of Nebraska. He is still in his 20s.


Chigozie Obioma by Zach Mueller

“The Fishermen” is a biblical parable set in the 1990s, when Nigeria was under the military dictatorship of Gen. Sani Abacha. Nine-year-old Benjamin, the narrator, is the youngest of four brothers. His father is a progressive man who works for the Central Bank of Nigeria. Education and professional ambition, he believes, are the only antidotes to the canker of corruption that has spread into every corner of his country’s life. Benjamin’s father wants his children to “dip their hands into rivers, seas, oceans of this life and become successful: doctors, pilots, professors, lawyers.”

Instead, when their father is transferred to another town, leaving their mother in charge not only of the four boys and their baby sister but of a food stall in the local market, the boys do what boys everywhere do when they realize they’re not supervised: They begin to play truant. Despite their mother’s every effort, within three months their father’s “long arm that often wielded the whip, the instrument of caution, snapped like a tired tree branch. Then we broke free.” The brothers fight with rival boys, smash the neighbors’ windows. And whenever possible they make for the Omi-Ala River, which runs through the town.

Once pure, the Omi-Ala had supplied early settlers with fish and clean drinking water. As is true throughout Africa, the “Omi-Ala was once believed to be a god; people worshiped it.” Now, like so much else in Nigeria, it is more like a sewer. ­Animal carcasses lie on its banks. The mutilated corpse of a woman has been found in the water, “her vital body parts ­dismembered.”

When the boys go there to fish, they catch more than they bargained for. Walking home one day, having hooked two big tilapia, they come upon a man asleep under a mango tree. “He was robed from head to foot in filth. As he rose spryly to stand, some of the filth rose with him, while some was left in patches on the ground. He had a fresh scar on his face just ­below his chin, and his back was caked with a dripping mess from some dead mango in a state of putrefaction.” He is Abulu, a madman known both for his soothsaying and for his unsavory habit of masturbating in public. When Abulu begins shouting at the boys, he calls the eldest, Ikenna, by name, although he has never met him and doesn’t know him. Ikenna, he prophesies, will die, killed by one of his own brothers.

As the weight of the prophecy settles over the boys, Obioma intensifies his focus on the bad luck that afflicts their family. The boys’ mother, unhinged by grief, has a nervous breakdown and is hospitalized. Their father, gaunt and gray-bearded, is seen visibly to crumple from the inside as his eminence as head of the family is compromised by his inability to protect those he loves. And then there are the brothers. If the prophecy is true, which of them will prove to be the murderer? Guilt, grief and lies bind the boys even while forcing them apart.

The political implications of “The Fishermen” are obvious, though never ­overstated. Countries can take a wrong turn, Obioma suggests, just as people can. In six decades of independence, Nigeria has had no shortage of lies, soothsayers and madmen. And no shortage of troubles.

As things fall apart and the family’s center cannot hold, Obioma’s readers will ­begin to recall another work of fiction from Africa, a book that, after more than half a century, has never been out of print. In his exploration of the mysterious and the murderous, of the terrors that can take hold of the human mind, of the colors of life in Africa, with its vibrant fabrics and its trees laden with fruit, and most of all in his ability to create dramatic tension in this most human of African stories, ­Chigozie Obioma truly is the heir to ­Chinua Achebe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/books/review/the-fishermen-by-chigozie-obioma.html

Looks spicy

I wish him the best

He can't be a successor yet with one book

He has to be prolific like achebe first

.

One certain sophisticated oily soup eaters no go like this news.
If U don't know who I am talking abt,just hold on,U will soon see them and their spiteful quotes.

dokyOloye:
One certain sophisticated oily soup eaters no go like this news.
If U don't know who I am talking abt,just hold on,U will soon see them and their spiteful quotes.

Grow up

Setaje:



Grow up

see them.
If d news were to be "Chigozie Obioma caught wt drugs",d same grown up U at Ur best would've been like ..... 'some ppl and drugs sha'

It's a bit premature to crown him Achebes' successor! It's even the first time i'm hearing of him!

I want to read that book. It'd be nicer if the mulling on the prophecy and not the prophecy itself actually tore the family apart.

Topic never start we don begin fight.
Which way Nigeria?

Chigozie Obioma...

Wise men from the East..

correction...the article states he's from "southwestern" Nigeria, not the East.

Naughtysite:
Chigozie Obioma...

Wise men from the East..

This is supposed to be an interesting topic that is meant to discuss the up and coming soon to be literary giants. But alas, this will not be the case. Everything goes downhill from here. It's a sorry state of affairs..sigh

pablus:
correction...the article states he's from "southwestern" Nigeria, not the East.

Born in

Correct me if I am wrong.

Don't need to read twice..

pablus:
correction...the article states he's from "southwestern" Nigeria, not the East.

Are you suffering from acanthamoeba keratitis?

lol let me grab a medical dictionary.

FrancisTony:

Are you suffering from acanthamoeba keratitis?

Alas, the thread was derailed before it even started.

Read this article sometime ago, its premature to say that he is a successor to Achebe. The writer of this article only made a comparison and did not do a coronation.