I'm relatively new to this forum though i've been visting Nairaland on and off for several months now.

I'm writing a book (trying to, okay) and was wondering if y'all could read through if you find the time.

Please be as harsh as you want. I am only on the first draft and need a lot of critiques!

About the book:
This is a book that tells the tale of the lives of the everyday people, including thousands of Nigerians and other Africans, who lived behind the "Iron Curtain" during the last days of Communist Russia,

But this book is also a love story and a tale of self-discovery for an African boy who makes his own journey into manhood under the shadows of that "Iron Curtain".


Prologue:
The East coast of England was fast disappearing in the distance as the St Nicholas Sealink Ferry made its way across the North Sea on its journey towards the Hook of Holland from Harwich.

On one of the levels, young people were dancing to the sound of the Summer music that was playing so loudly in the background and occasionally, as the ferry would ride on waves of the Atlantic Ocean, you would feel a slight swaying of the floor beneath your feet; so slight that it was so easy to forget that you were not at a night club or at a disco somewhere on the shore having a night out…,

Sitting in groups and quaffing cans of beer or racing down shots of spirits were young people, mostly students, of all colours and sizes, going back to their various bases all over Continental Europe and beyond; laughing to their own jokes or just talking very loudly of their escapades during this summer holiday that was just ending…

There were two of us, Nigerian students who sat at my table occasionally glancing at the people who danced below.

The guy sitting opposite me was a young Nigerian medical student, who I had met for the first time just a few weeks earlier at the Students hostel in West Ham.

He was talking about how he couldn’t wait to get back to his many “babes” in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, where he was a student and had to occasionally raise his voice so that I could hear him above the sound of the UB 40 track that was playing so loudly in the background.

His eyes were already glazing over from the volume of alcohol we had been consuming since we left Liverpool street station several hours earlier, but he was opening yet another can of beer and grinning lazily…

“Life sweet Oh!” he declared in Pidgin English,

And I couldn’t but agree with him more!

We had both arrived London barely six weeks earlier penniless and with no family in the UK, but were now going back to our different cities where we were both medical students with loads of clothes from the various cheap Saturday markets that sell all over East London and cheap electronics that we were going to sell for mind blowing profits…

Yes, life was good even though we were going back to our lives as black African students in the Soviet Union, which was still under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev and still gripped in the teething pains of his Perestroika…


You see, this was the summer of 1988, but I think this story should start a little earlier;

I think that it should start at the very beginning of this adventure that took place once upon a time in Soviet Russia…

BOOK ONE: THE BOYS FROM NAIJA

1.…
It was raining heavily that day as my uncles old blue Peugeot 504 salon car parked outside the departures lounge of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos.

We had been parked for a few minute and I was sitting there thinking of how I was going to escape getting drenched by the torrential rain as I watched the thick slices of raindrops slicing downwards.

It was quite difficult to see beyond the closed car windows but you could hear the occasional muffled rumble of thunder like drumbeats in the distance and the flashes of lightening flashing now and then across the darkening Lagos afternoon sky…

The driver of a white Mercedes Benz who was parked beside my uncle, kept on bleeping the horn of his car intermittently, but the sound was swallowed up by the droning of the torrential downpour, interspersed with the splashing sound of the rain as it kept on crashing to the ground…

My luggage was in the boot of my uncles car and I was unsure of how I was going to get at it under the torrential down pour.

Then I saw one of the airport porters, who was wearing a yellow Macintosh raincoat, looking in our direction while the man in the white Mercedes continued to bleep his horn.

“I’ll probably get that porter over there in the raincoat to help out with the luggage” I said to my uncle who nodded in agreement.

I had gotten out and managed to get to him without getting soaked by the rain.

“Oga you get load in the boot?” he asked in pidgin English as I approached him.
“Yes and you fit help bring am out?“
“No problem, Oga”

He had wheeled a trolley to the boot of the car and then jacked out my large black leather suitcase on to the trolley.

My uncle had horned twice and given me a thumbs up as he pulled out of his parking spot and drove slowly away as the man in the Mercedes flashed him a waka.

And I was left on my own to continue with the rest of the journey to begin a new life as a Nigerian student in the USSR.


It is the dream of most Nigerian students, and indeed most students from Sub-Saharan Africa, to continue with their higher education abroad once they finish their secondary school education.

For those whose parents can afford it these dreams sometimes come true as many of them end up in the different Universities across Europe and North America…

But only very few are enthusiastic about going to Soviet Russia to study.

First of all, nobody seemed to know exactly what was going on behind the so called Iron Curtain and as a result of this lack of information, the little bits and pieces that people did get to hear where evidently full of exaggeration;

For instance, a lot of people believed that once you got to the Soviet Union that you were gradually brain-washed and then indoctrinated with a lot of harmful Communist ideologies that would turn you into a Communist puppet and make it difficult for you to fit in back to “normal” society on your return.


In fact stories abounded of people who had returned from the Soviet Union behaving very, very strangely…

Secondly, it was believed that because of the Communists loathing for the Western way of life that life in Soviet Russia was very frugal, having been stripped of that “joie de vie” that students everywhere in the world are want to engage in as part of their extra-curricular exertions.

One of my childhood friends who got a Scholarship to the Soviet Union to study Medicine a year earlier than I did had refused to go as he preferred to remain in Nigeria than to venture on a trip to that “unknown world“ that would turn him into a “zombie“…

But one of my distant relatives, the “Uncle” who had taken me to the Murtala Mohammed Airport that morning, had actually studied Engineering at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow about ten years earlier.

Much as he accepted that life could be difficult in the Russia, he had discounted a lot of the things that were said as being the products of "Western” propaganda;

“No body is going to brain-wash you!” he would say. “…Yes, they’ll feed you a lot of their Communist propaganda but they don’t force you to accept any of their views. It’s left for you to choose if Communism as an ideology is bad or not…”

And since he seemed to be doing relatively well professionally and was actually quite rational in his conversations, my dad was not opposed to him applying to the Nigerian-Soviet Friendship Association, to which he belonged, for one of the yearly Scholarships to the USSR that they had going at the time.

I didn’t mind either as I was no longer very enthusiastic about continuing with my University education in Nigeria.

You see, after my secondary school education I had gotten an admission into the University of Jos to study Medicine, but ended up spending more than half of the academic year at home because of the “Ango Must Go” students protests.

The “Ango Must Go protests” occurred on the heels of the political killings of several students who had been on a peaceful protest at the Ahmadu Bello University in the Northern Nigerian city of Zaria. As a result of this students all over the country had erupted in anger, staging demonstrations in all the Federal Universities and in some cases actually becoming very violent, as was the case in the University of Ibadan where they burnt down a police station.

As a result of this the then Military government of General Ibrahim Babangida was forced to close down all the federal Universities indefinitely…

And that is how I ended up at the Murtala Mohammed Airport on a rainy day in September of 1986 going to Russia on a Scholarship to study Medicine.

OK people don't seem to find the title attractive enough, or what?!

I've been thinking about possibly changing the title to one of the following:

Rite of passage;
First because i have had to sharpen the intro viz:

This book continues the narrative of the African experience in the twentieth century by telling the story of some African students and everyday Russian people through the eyes of a Nigerian Medical student studying on scholarship in Soviet Russia during the years of the Perestroika.

This book is also a love story and tells of the rite of passage into manhood of an African teenager who lived in Russia in the days when the Iron Curtain was finally dismantled…

Another thought is to title it simply;
"Nye'gr"

Nye'gr is the Russian word for Nigger,

PS: It's based on the true experiences of the author.

Why don't you finish a first draft, find a few trusted folks who can give you honest reviews, then revise your work. Get a book editor and work in private with the fellow. Good luck.

Hey, read what u put in its not bad, at least it was able to keep me rooted to my seat(im usually not able to sit infront of the screen to read a novel, only if its a romantic one!, im jobless, i acknowledge dt). However, maybe it was able able to keep me rooted to my seat because its not that long, and its a little bit interesting but I think you're presentin the novel in a first person kind of dialogue, then it might be a little more interestin, if you put in little details like, the smell present in that scene, like in the case of the "party"onboard, it probably smelt of alcohol n stuff like dt. So I don't think, it would hurt if u made it a little bit more intimate, u know, help the reader feel what the writer's feeling,


Then, there's this point where u used the term “joie de vie”, just wanted to correct u, i think the correct spellin is "joie de vivre" and I think it shld be put in italics because its of a different language than d one in which your writin d novel, or maybe, u shld do like Wole Soyinka did in his Autobiography, put the meanin in as an endnote,

I'm not a writer, so if I made any mistakes in my "naive" correctns, please tell me.


Inaddition, the title is catchy, I like it, im bored, so im movin frm forum to forum, n I came upon the literary one, saw "They called me Nigger" and it caught my interest. So, in my "own" opinion, its an ok title

@Jideosik -thanks for your advice.

@Me,Myself-i really appreciate your comment. And will take it on board when i am doing the second review of the book.
I'm more than half way through the first draft and, so far, people who have been following the story where i have been doing it online echo the same thing about wanting to finish it once they start reading. And that's why i'm now planning to actually work on it until it is publish-worthy.
,
If you want to read the rest of the story so far let me know and i can give you the link.
But thanks, in any case.

Definitely, id be very glad if u sent the link, my email's zeebyrocks@yahoo.com.
Thanks, n all the best with the novel.

I've sent you the link on your email.
Thanks again.

Hi Beneli.
Nice one; but could do with some proofreading/editing.

Samplers:

, want to engage should be wont to engage

, uncles ; uncle's

, departures lounge; departure lounge

, a few minute; a few minutes

, thunder like; thunder-like

, waka( a 'foreign' word like "joie de vivre" should be in italics

, You said the rainfall was torrential, so how did you manage to get to him without getting soaked? You be "winch"?

Not to worry though. I render meticulous proofreading and editing services at competitive rates, an look forward to collaborating with you on this project.

Contact me : k10resources@gmail.com

Hi Beneli,
there were some "structural" irregularities that I came across very often. Below are some examples:

1 - We had been parked for a few minutes: Rather vague expression of time.
Is this "few minutes" a long time or a short time? I suggest you emphasize the few minutes with yet another adjective eg "We had only been parked for a few minutes" for a short time, or "we had now been parked for a few minutes" to signify the writers impatience with the length of time


2 -The driver of a white Mercedes Benz who was parked beside my uncle
It's the Benz that is parked, so this should read the driver of a benz "THAT" was parked,

3 the droning of the torrential downpour
Drone? Lagos rain doesn't drone - a bee drones. A wasp drones. I suggest you find another descriptor to describe the rain. How about the crashing of the torrential downpour, or the heave staccato/rythm of the torrential downpour

4 My luggage was in the boot of my uncles car and I was unsure of how I was going to get at it under the torrential down pour.
This is a repetition of an earlier paragraph where the character was wondering how to avoid getting wet

5“I’ll probably get that porter over there in the raincoat to help out with the luggage
Wrong choice of word - probably. Since the character had made a decision, it should be I'll try and get.

This is a nice story, and is a bit catching. It also contains some of the expectation that every good story should contain. However, at the moment, you need to work on the structure, when you use words, try and visualise the situation, and avoid ambiguities. You also more than once described the same situation.

Apart from that, excellent stuff!

Thanks Banderas, your corrections are well noted.

I'm currently working on the second draft and even that, i'm sure, has some structural and grammatical problems. Fortunately, people do find the story interesting so once i'm happy with the second draft i intend to send it out for professional editing.

I've posted the first part of the second draft under "memoirs of a marginal man" and as you can see, its an improvement on the first one,

Thanks again.

i wanted to commend you the your effort and pateince it took towrite this whole novel because to say the truth, it is not everybody that starts to do a writing like this that finishs it, expecially when you have no royalties coming your way. i wish you all the best.
you have done something i have been trying to

Thanks Princesa, but the work is not yet finished
In the first draft i was just experimenting and the initial concept was for it to be more autobiographical than fiction, but i later realised that i could say a lot more by not limiting the story to just my experinces. So the second draft is coming out quite different from the first one. And even in this draft, i'm continuously changing things.

But it is moving along. I am committed to finishing the story. As you might be aware, people who have ever been bitten by the writing bug know that some stories already exist in the netherworld but are just waiting for those who are bold enough-and committed-to rescuing them.

I don't know which draft will eventually be the final one. But this novel will be published.

www.eliasbeneli..com

well it sounded like you were reproaching me what have i done
or maybe i dont understand you and you dont understand me
anyway sha na you know

@ Princesa
NO! I wasn't reproaching you in anyway. God forbid bad thing!
How can i reproach you when you paid me a compliment?

I was letting you know that i'm not even half done and that in spite of the herculean task of completing the job, that i am smitten with the bug and intend to finish the book.

I am really sorry if i gave you a wrong impression anywhere in my post. But i honestly can't find the place in the post, which may have come across as a reproach

And like i said, you paid me a compliment and i appreciate it

okay beneli, it was just a mis-understanding on my part and since am kinda new in nairaland i dont wanna go matching toes
i still think you are doing a good job and may the BUG bite you more
AMEN