An Orchestra of Minorities

<blockquote> <i>Agbatta-Alumalu, the fathers of old say that without light, a person cannot sprout shadows. My host fell in love with this woman. She came as a strange, sudden light that caused shadows to spring from everything else.</i> </blockquote><br />Wow. How do I even begin to review this book? All words seem inadequate. It is exceptional. It is beautiful. And it is unlike anything I've ever read before.<br /><br />It's challenging, too. I don't want to sell it to readers who won't like it. It's a clever and dense literary work, heavily influenced by Nigerian cosmology. It takes some time to settle into the unusual narration - the story is narrated by Chinonso's chi (a kind of guardian spirit) - but once I did, I could not put it down. <br /><blockquote> <i>She poked her hand into the dark and secret places of his life and touched everything in it. And in time, she became the thing his soul had been yearning after for years with tears in its eyes.</i> </blockquote><br />The strength of this novel, I feel, is that it is fundamentally an old and universal tale. A tale of a poor man who falls for a woman above his station and will do anything within his power to please her family and earn the right to be with her. These familiar concepts are given a distinctly Nigerian spin, making it stand out from the stories that have come before it.<br /><br />As I said, it can be a tough read. The characters often switch between Nigerian Pidgin, untranslated Igbo, and the "language of the White man", but it is impressive how easily I understood everything without knowing a word of Igbo. I guess a huge part of it is the way that the author - through the chi - constructs each scene. <br /><br />But it's tough for another reason, too. The chi's wisdom and wit add warmth to the story, but there is no disguising the fact that this is a dark book, full of tragedy and misfortune, including one instance of on-page rape. There is one particularly tragic event - you will know the one I mean - and it is made all the more disturbing because it is so obvious. The reader sees it coming long before Nonso does, and the way Obioma leads us up to the inevitable made me deeply anxious and upset. It is painful to witness.<br /><blockquote> <i>Guardian spirits of mankind, have we thought about the powers that passion creates in a human being?</i> </blockquote><br />We are told in the beginning that Nonso's chi has come to plead for his host before the supreme Igbo god, Chukwu. We know instantly that this kind, laid-back farmer's life is about to unravel. And yet this, somehow, makes it all the more tense when we are led on the journey to find out what happened to him.<br /><br /><b>Gorgeous descriptions, Nigerian mythology, a love story that rips your heart out, and a complex and fascinating protagonist who we want so very very much to succeed</b>-- all these things await the reader who picks up this book. If any book deserves to become a "classic", then <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/35003282.An_Orchestra_of_Minorities" title="An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma" rel="noopener"> An Orchestra of Minorities</a> certainly does.<br /><br /><a href="http://emilymay.me" rel="nofollow noopener">Blog</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thebookgeekreviews" rel="nofollow noopener">Facebook</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/thebookgeek01" rel="nofollow noopener">Twitter</a> | <a href="http://instagram.com/emleemay" rel="nofollow noopener">Instagram</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/EmilyMayTheBookGeek" rel="nofollow noopener">Youtube</a>

<i> <b>"A story should glide like a yacht, not bump along like a supermarket trolley."</b> </i><br />—Me<br /><br />Having seen a profusion of rapturous reviews for this African tale, I had very high hopes. And what a gorgeous title too! I was beguiled and ready to be seduced. "Let me at it!" I cried.<br /><br />Hurrr-rrr-chh! (A screech of brakes, or a needle skidding on vinyl).<br /><br />Alas, I just didn't take to it. <br />I know I'm a fusspot, but I really didn’t warm to it. And for that, I'm truly sorry.<br />The omniscient narrator (a guardian spirit) waffled on in a simplistic writing style that had me rolling my eyes and wishing we could bring a resuscitation team of literary greats back from the dead. The first few chapters were all exposition and there was nothing here that resembled an actual story. Our ethereal narrator kept repeating, "I had seen it many times." To which I retorted, "Yes, you've said it many times too, you insufferable parrot!"<br />And ... relax.<br />Namaste.<br />So, while the cosmic blather continued with little sign of anything resembling dialogue or human interaction on the horizon, I shimmied into a lifebuoy and prepared to jump ship. <br />Happily, a story began to emerge. And a very promising one at that: a tale of Nonso Olisa, an ill-starred Nigerian poultry farmer who falls in love with a woman who, as a result of being jilted, was intent on throwing herself off a bridge.<br />"Ah-ha! That's more like it!" I cheered, casting off my lifebuoy and getting myself nice and comfy with a packet of chocolate chip cookies.<br />Auspiciously, the author began to move through his literary gears, fashioning a contemporary Greek tragedy that suggested it might finally live up to its star billing (and what eventually happens to our unworldly chicken farmer when he relocates to Cyprus is a complete <i>volte-face</i> from the book's uneventful opening chapters). The scene was set and I was ready to give it a second chance.<br />But, d'oh! Again with the exposition! Chigozie Obiama snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by reintroducing yet more explanatory notes (groan) that are surely surplus to requirements. There was a potentially-moving human story here that needed to be told! (A thorough edit and word cull would have done this novel a power of good). <br />The story continued to advance like a slug through treacle and, despite his terrible woes, I lost all sympathy for the hapless main character (he was largely the architect of his own downfall). I rooted for Ndali (the lady from the bridge) much more. The pacing throughout remained leaden and I really struggled to get to the finishing line. <br /><br />In my humble opinion, Salman Rushdie (<i>Midnight’s Children</i>) and Gabriel García Márquez (<i>One Hundred Years of Solitude</i>) do first-person and third-person narrative storytelling so much better. <br /><br />But, as you can see by its plethora of laudatory reviews, Chigozie Obiama's book delights a great many of his readers, so I'm almost certain you should take what I've said with a pinch of salt and dive right in!<br />Have a lifebuoy ready, though, just in case...

If the prey do not produce their version of the tale, the predators will always be the heroes in the story of the hunt, says the quotation which opens this unusual and beautiful novel; and indeed, we come to understand that the "minorities" in its title are the prey, so often voiceless, who are now precariously recovering their ability to bear witness. I like this attitude. I like to hear about people who have been trampled on by history but fought back. Recently, I have read Sofi Oksanen's <i>When the Doves Disappeared</i>, which tells us about the Estonians, and I have read Romain Gary's <i>La danse de Gengis Cohn</i>, which tells us about the Polish Jews. I have read Jonathan Rée's <i>I See a Voice</i>, which tells us about the worldwide Deaf community. Now I have read Chigozie Obioma's account of the Nigerians. These people's stories have many elements in common, and one of the most obvious is that their languages have been systematically suppressed. The Soviets made Russian the language of administration and business when they were occupying Estonia. Teachers punished Deaf children who tried to use sign language. I was not surprised to read that the British punished Nigerians who used "African languages".<br /><br />When one people decides to eradicate another, they sometimes just kill them, as the Germans did with the Polish Jews and the Spaniards did with the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Caribbean islands. (You can find a great deal about this in Jens Bjørneboe's <i>Bestialitetens historie</i>). But most often they can't quite bring themselves to go this far, and they find they can achieve their ends almost as well by eradicating the subject people's language and culture; they are pleased to discover that some of their subjects cooperate. The thing that makes <i>When the Doves Disappeared</i> so horrifying is the way Edgar willingly turns himself into an efficient tool, first of the Nazis and then of the Bolsheviks. And similarly, what makes <i>An Orchestra of Minorities</i> so horrifying is that the truly cruel and despicable things that happen are not done by White people. They are done by Black people who have internalised the values and language of the White people and come to despise their own culture's values and language. <br /><br />The book fights back by setting its action in the world of traditional Igbo culture, a world most of its readers will know nothing about. I certainly didn't. Characters often speak for a sentence or two in Igbo or pidgin, to remind the reader that if you're an Igbo whose family hasn't managed to find the money to send you to university, this is what it's like: you hear words, perhaps important words, in the White man's language, and you don't understand them. Most memorably, the narrator is the central character's <i>chi</i>. What is a <i>chi</i>? We don't have this concept in our spiritual universe. It is not a Christian soul or guardian angel, and it is not a Hindu atman. It is a little bit like all of these, but only a little bit. Really it is something different, and even after reading the book I have only a very partial understanding of what a <i>chi</i> is. It is another person, who is both part of you and not part of you, who has been alive before you were born as part of other people, and will be alive after you are dead. <br /><br />So how can any of this make a book which a Westerner can find, not just worthwhile, but compelling? (I stayed up until 1 am last night finishing it). Somehow, the author has done a strange and remarkable thing. He has learned to grasp our language and culture and even love it, but without letting go of his own. He has taken this alien universe with its incomprehensible language and he has transposed it into gorgeous and poetic English. He has pushed open a door between our two world, just a crack but that is already a huge achievement, and we look through that crack and are amazed. We think: this is something completely new. I have never seen anything like it. <br /><br />Thank you, Chigozie Obioma. If only there were more people like you.

Right from the start of <i> <b>An Orchestra of Minorities</b> </i> we know that the main character Nonso, a humble poultry farmer, has done something very bad but we don’t yet know what it is. His ‘chi’, a sort of guardian spirit, is interceding with the Igbo deity on Nonso’s behalf, and this chi narrates the tale of Nonso’s downfall like a courtroom lawyer stating his case for the defence. What gradually unfolds is a love story and a tragedy shot through with Igbo cosmology and tradition.<br /><br />Nonso the chicken guy meets the beautiful, educated, worldly Ndali but her wealthy parents disapprove. He decides the solution is to pursue higher education but this proves disastrous and things go from bad to worse for Nonso. Because it’s all being told retrospectively by Nonso’s chi, there’s plenty of ominous foreshadowing, and it’s ultimately quite a bleak tale. <br /><br />I couldn’t quite get into <i>An Orchestra of Minorities</i>, and I think the reason comes down to pacing and structural issues. The first half of the book is just so slow. From about the middle it picks up, but remains uneven to the end. Obioma builds tension only to insert humdrum details at the oddest moments; he also neglects certain characters and plot points. <br /><br />The book is about Nonso’s fall and I didn’t have a problem with Nonso being the main focus. But Ndali’s character was skimmed over to a ridiculous degree. When the story begins Ndali is (apparently) suicidal, but this is just the setup for a meet-cute and is never really mentioned again. It’s a glaring loose thread. Similarly, even before these two lovebirds get together, Nonso has a whole other (brief) relationship with a woman named Motu, which goes nowhere and doesn’t add much to the narrative. I expected to eventually circle back to these matters, but no.<br /><br />There’s also some very heavy-handed imagery, especially involving a pet gosling that Nonso had as a child. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that something bad happened to the gosling. Nonso is constantly thinking about his gosling, remembering his gosling, dreaming about his gosling… gee, do you think this gosling represents Ndali? The ending really angered me too.<br /><br />These are obviously nitpicks but they stand out because the book overall just wasn’t engaging enough, it was slow and the characters, especially the female characters, were thinly drawn. As it’s being heavily promoted my expectations were high, but it fell flat for me.

Based upon Nigerian Igbo beliefs, each being has a "chi", a guardian spirit. A chi has gone through many cycles of reincarnation and is familiar with earthy challenges. In the present cycle of life, Chinonso Solomon Olisa is a host. His chi, the book's commentator, tries to intercede, to testify to Chukwu (Creator of All), that Nonso has committed a grave crime, but unknowingly.<br /><br />Nonso was a man of silence. He felt total emptiness and perpetual loneliness. His father died leaving him in charge of their poultry farm. His pet gosling died through an act of revenge performed by catapulting a stone. Raising fowl suited Nonso. These domestic creatures were weak animals and he enjoyed ministering to them. On the way home from market, with a new flock (his comrades) in his truck, he witnessed a young woman scaling a bridge over the Amatu River, planning her demise. Nonso instantly reacted by throwing two of his chickens from the bridge to show her what would happen if she jumped. He talked her down, after all, he understood despair. His chi suggested he proceed home. In retrospect, Nonso felt he hadn't done enough to help her. A chance meeting...a connection...lonely, uneducated farmer meets girl of his dreams...highly educated Ndali Obialor feels truly cherished...it's love! Ndali and her family live in a mansion with marble floors. Ndali, however, has a mind of her own. Chi is worried that the budding love between Nonso and Ndali will make Nonso disregard his counsel. In order to be worthy of Ndali, but against her wishes and protests, Nonso leaves his poultry farm in Nigeria and travels to north Cyprus seeking higher education and lifestyle change in the name of love.<br /><br />Nonso's chi's testimony to Chukwu includes a recounting of Nonso's trials and tribulations in his quest for betterment. Chi explains that although, as a spirit being, he left his host's body in search of consultation to benefit his host, he could not interfere. "We should allow man to execute his will and be man".<br /><br />"An Orchestra of Minorities" by Chigozie Obioma left me speechless, breathless and filled with awe. The prose in this work of magical realism was superb. I slowly savored this remarkable, yet harsh and devastating tale. I highly recommend this book!<br /><br />Thank you Little, Brown and Company and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "An Orchestra of Minorities".

<b>Now Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019</b><br />I feel torn between the considerable merit of this tale about the loss of dignity and the fact that I had a very hard time finishing the book because of its repetitiveness and its excessive love for overly detailed descriptions: For what it has to say, this novel is at least 200 pages too long. Obioma tells the story of Chinonso, a young Nigerian poultry farmer, who falls in love with Ndali, a student of pharmacy. Ndali's family does not accept Chinonso because of his lack of education, so he sells all of his belongings in order to travel to Northern Cyprus - he was told that he could get a college degree there. But things do not turn out as planned... <br /><br />Obioma does a fantastic job when it comes to describing the importance of personal dignity for the human soul: Again and again, Chinonso is confronted with degradation and cruelty, and he desperately tries to overcome or at least psychologically deal with it. In Nigeria, Ndali's family of social climbers does not grant him the respect he deserves for being a farmer, a sentiment which he internalizes; in Cyprus, he is a black foreigner who gets caught up in the system - thus, the book also touches upon the experiences of African immigrants. It is certainly no coincidence that Chinonso travels to Northern Cyprus, not the Republic of Cyprus: Not only did <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/16/chigozie-obioma-booker-nominee-haunted-student-years-northern-cyprus" rel="nofollow noopener">the author really meet a fellow Nigerian man in Northern Cyprus</a> whose destiny inspired him to write this book, Chinonso also strands right at the border of the EU, but cannot cross into it (only the Republic of Cyprus is a member state). <br /><br />Chinonso's travels are very loosely based on <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/1381.The_Odyssey" title="The Odyssey by Homer" rel="noopener">The Odyssey</a>, but will Ndali, his Penelope, wait for him? What sets Obioma's book apart from the classic European tale is (among other things) the narrator: We hear the whole story from the point of view of Chinonso's chi, his guardian spirit which stands at the center of Igbo cosmological belief. The author has explained that he wanted to challenge the Western conception of agency: His book's central character has only limited agency, because the chi points to the dimension of destiny beyond human control. This is certainly a fascinating narrative concept (especially for Westerners like me who are largely unfamiliar with Igbo culture), but to my ears, the very particular voice of the chi which frequently breaks the narrative flow by uttering rather long general philosophical musings was sometimes a little hard to bear, especially the relentless repetition of its signature sentence: "I have seen it many times" - I admit that at some point, I wanted to slap Chinonso's chi for repeating this one sentence over and over and over again. On the other hand, Obioma intended to break with Western traditions of writing, so there is certainly the factor of Western readers struggling with his approach that influences the reading experience, and that absolutely can't be held against the author. <br /><br />As the story progresses, it becomes clear why the chi insists on giving us all, and I mean ALL!, the details about its host Chinonso and what happened to him, but guys, this is one looooooooooong book that outstays its welcome - if it was shorter, I'm sure it would have a higher impact. The topic of dignity is one of the most urgent in our current political climate, it is at the core of questions like migration, the culture wars, identity politics etc.: Chinonso is just one member of the "Orchestra of Minorities" which is made up by millions of people worldwide who have to fight for their dignity. So I really wish I could have loved this novel more, but ultimately, it buried an urgent topic under too many words.

Beautiful writing and interesting philosophy totally wasted on a book that doesn't think of women as people. Nothing but a litany of excuses for a man's violence being let loose on a woman he supposedly loves. Every terrible wrong in his life, of which she was not actor or creator, being brought to her door.<br /><br />This is nature. <br /><br />This is how a man is. <br /><br />This is what a man does. <br /><br />On &amp; on &amp; on not questioning, not pushing, not offering a different vision of the world. Sexual violence against the male protagonist is elided and not looked at, yet we are shown and met to sympathize him pushing past a woman's nos to fuck her without a condom, of him obsessively and angrily fantasizing about men touching a woman he is no longer with (in tit biting detail), "his woman had yielded to another man." Forgives is available to those who have truly wronged him, but not to a woman who dares to be loved by him &amp; not wait for him eternally.<br /><br />I was drawn in by the philosophy, by the discussion of the nature of the world &amp; of the way Igbo culture might fit into a modern context- unfortunately the narrative underneath was stale garbage retreading on the same goddamn bullshit where a women's pain is meaningless- where a woman is nothing but an object on which love in enacted- where we must start already hearing excuses for why violence against her should be forgiven. <br /><br />Fuck this. <br /><br />Fuck every second of reading it.

Anti-hero? Check!<br />Dramatic irony? Check!<br />Homer’s <i>Odyssey</i>? Not so much.<br /><blockquote> <i>All who have been chained and beaten, whose lands have been plundered, whose civilizations have been destroyed, who have been silenced, raped, shamed, and killed. With all these people, he'd come to share a common fate. They were the minorities of this world whose only recourse was to join this universal orchestra in which all there was to do was cry and wail.</i> </blockquote>

An Orchestra of Minorities is a very original story and very different from anything I have read. It’s a rich, complex tale about love, sacrifice and misfortune. The story is narrated by our main character Chinonso’s Chi, a guardian spirit. The Chi guides him and us through the story. The Chi presence, warm kindness and concern give the story a heartwarming feel through the heartbreaking parts in the story.<br /><br />An Orchestra of Minorities is a complex and beautifully emotionally written story yet challenging with the density to it. I thought the characters started off interesting and engaging and I connected with the characters and wanted to get to know them better. However, things start to get a bit heavy with Igho culture, folklore and language that weighed down the story for me. I became distracted and at times sidetracked me from continuing to engage with the characters. This definitely could be the most interesting part of the story for readers however for this reader it was a bit too ambitious for me.<br /><br />I read this one on my own which isn’t something I do very often but with timing I ended up reading it on my own. I wish I had read it with my sisters as it is one that would work really well as a group read to discuss it. Probably even better with an in-person group. I highly recommend for group reads.<br /><br />Thank you to Hachette Canada, Little Brown and Chigozie Obioma for my ARC to read and review.

Now shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize having been re-read following its longlisting.<br /><br />As part of my re-read I came across two articles in the Millions by the author which I found very helpful for understanding the writing style that the author has deployed is and it’s very deliberate contrast in its expansive prose and layers of reality to what he sees as the minimalism and literalness that has come to dominate much Western literature. Both articles locate his writing firmly in a Nigerian tradition and appear a conscious effort to portray himself as a successor to <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/8051.Chinua_Achebe" title="Chinua Achebe" rel="noopener">Chinua Achebe</a>. Given a number of the expansive books on the longlist I feel that the judges may agree with his take. <br /><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://themillions.com/2015/06/the-audacity-of-prose.html">https://themillions.com/2015/06/the-a...</a> which is a fascinating read and starts <br /><br /><i>In one of his essays, the late Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe stated that “no one be fooled by the fact that we write in English, for we intend to do unheard-of things with it.” That “we” is, in essence, an authoritative oratorical posture that cast him as a representative of a group, a kindred of writers who — either by design or fate — have adopted English as the language of literary composition. With these words, it seems that to Achebe the intention to do “unheard-of” things with language is a primary factor in literary creation. He is right. And this should be the most important factor</i><br /><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://themillions.com/2017/02/93351.html">https://themillions.com/2017/02/93351...</a> which starts <br /><br /><i>Like most other art forms, fiction has undergone many configurations over the years, but its core has remained, as always, the aesthetic pleasure of reading. When we read, we connect to the immaterial source of the story through its outstretched limbs. The “limb” or variants of it are what the writer has deemed fit for us to see, to gaze at and admire. It is not often the whole. But one of the major ways in which fiction has changed today — from the second half of the 20th century especially — is that most of its fiction reveals all its limbs to us all at once. Nothing is hidden behind the esoteric wall of mystery or metaphysics.</i><br /><br />ORIGINAL REVIEW<br /><br /><blockquote> <i>“A poultry farmer named Jamike Nwaorji, having groomed him for some time, having plucked excess feathers from his body, having fed him with mash and millet, having let him graze about gaily, having probably staunched a leg wounded by a stray nail, had now sealed him up in a cage. And all he could do now, all there was to do now, was cry and wail. He had now joined many others, all the people Tobe had listed who have been defrauded of their belongings –the Nigerian girl near the police station, the man at the airport, all those who have been captured against their will to do what they did not want to do either in the past or the present, all who have been forced into joining an entity they do not wish to belong to, and countless others. All who have been chained and beaten, whose lands have been plundered, whose civilisations have been destroyed, who have been silenced, raped, shamed and killed. With all these people, he’d come to share a common fate. They were the minorities of this world whose only recourse was to join this universal orchestra in which all there was to do was cry and wail.” </i> </blockquote><br /><br />The author’s first book and debut novel, “The Fishermen” prize, a deeply allegorical but simply narrated story set in Nigeria, was, perhaps surprisingly, shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. This is his second novel and more ambitious in scope. <br /><br />The genesis of the novel is contained in this 2016 article written by the author for the Guardian<br /><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/16/chigozie-obioma-booker-nominee-haunted-student-years-northern-cyprus">https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...</a><br /><br />The author recounts his own experience as a Nigerian student in (the largely unrecognised state of Turkish) Northern Cyprus and his realisation that many if not most of the other Nigerian students there had been swindled out of money they had paid in advance for fees and accommodation; and also deceived into believing that entry to Northern Cyprus would give them jobs, prosperity and the right to move anywhere in the EU. <br /><br />The author himself had been able, via his family, to pay his fees direct to the University and from his degree was able to gain a place as a Creative Writing lecturer in the US. However his experience was very much the exception and one of his fellow students Jay (who appears as a character in this book) committed suicide as a result of his despair on arriving in Cyprus and realising the way he had been deceived. The author was clearly hugely affected by this incident and wondered about the Nigerian who had carried out the swindle, who was presumably unaware that his small momentary gain had such cataclysmic consequences. The article also covers an image of Northern Cyprus which stuck with the author - trapped birds trying to escape their fate.<br /><br />In interviews about the book, the author has also talked about how this incident and other things he witnessed in Cyprus caused him to examine what he sees as the great topic of literature - the contradiction between free will and fate and how he interprets them through, not so much traditional Western views, but through the prism of the ancient Igbo philosophy of his ancestors:<br /><br /><blockquote> <i> “I think it’s the question of fate’s unknowingness, its unquestionability, its irrationality, its madness, its unpredictability, its mercy, its brutality, its generosity, its elusiveness, its banality, its vitality, and all the things you can ascribe to it. It is the most metaphysical of all phenomena—if we can call it a phenomenon. I cannot conceive of a greater topic for great literature ............. I’m more chiefly concerned with metaphysics of existence and essence as they relate to the Igbo philosophy of being. We believe that life is in essence a dialectic between free will and destiny. It is a paradox: that you can make a choice, yet, that everything is preordained? And it is in this space that I anchor my stories.’ </i> </blockquote><br /><br />The novel that he produced (originally conceived as per the 2016 Guardian article, as “The Falconer”) features a young Nigerian man Chinoso - his mother having died in his childhood, the recent death of his father has left him newly orphaned and in sole charge of a the poultry farming business he and his father developed. Somewhat at a loss in live, one day he persuades a girl against committing suicide by jumping from a bridge into a torrential river, sacrificing two of his precious newly purchased birds to shock her with the physical horror of what she is contemplating.<br /><br />Later the woman seeks him out and realising what he sacrificed for her, as well as being hugely affected by an incident when he shows the lengths to which he is prepared to go for what he loves, by attacking a hawk which is protecting his fowl, begins a relationship with him. <br /><br />She however is studying for a Pharmacy degree and the daughter of a tribal Chief, and her family violently reject both his poverty and, more tellingly, lack of education. The latter leads him to the fateful decision to take up an invite from an old school acquaintance (one he used to bully at school) that he will arrange a place to study at a European university (in Northern Cyprus),a one thing he funds by selling his beloved poultry and his family home. <br /><br />The conventional part of the narrative follows his arrival in Northern Cyprus as the scam played out on him becomes immediately apparent, the tragic spiral of events that follows and his eventual return to Nigeria to confront his past. <br /><br />A story which while conventional and, explicitly drawing on the Odyssey, is also told in a vibrant way, with pidgin English and Igbo (both translated and untranslated) sitting alongside vivid descriptions. <br /><br />But what really distinguishes the book is its unconventional part - which is based in Igbo cosmology and philosophy. <br /><br />The book is narrated by Chinoso’s guardian spirit - his chi. Chapters are told in flashback, effectively in the form of a defense statement drawn up by the chi to the higher powers, setting out Chinoso’s fate and his resulting actions, drawing on ancient Igbo parables, sayings and beliefs in an attempt to explain both, and with the ultimate aim of pleading for divine clemency for Chinoso’s actions, in particular his unwitting harming of a pregnant woman.<br /><br />On the whole I think this approach works - the chi functions as a form of partial omniscient narrator, successfully re-appropriating the standard (but often criticised) form of third-party Western novelistic narration into a more ancient tradition of African story telling. <br /><br />And the chi explores dialectic themes, first of loneliness and love in the opening Nigerian section; then fate and destiny, despair and hope in the Cypriot parts; then the ideas of hatred and forgiveness in the closing section. <br /><br />All the time indulging in vivid imagery:<br /><br /><blockquote> <i>Most of what he said pivoted around the perils of loneliness and the need for a woman. And his words were true, for I had lived among mankind long enough to know that loneliness is the violent dog that barks interminably through the long night of grief. I have seen it many times.<br /><br />EBUBEDIKE, the great fathers speak of a man who is anxious and afraid as being in a fettered state. They say this because anxiety and fear rob a man of his peace. And a man without peace? Such a man, they say, is inwardly dead. But when he rids himself of the shackles, and the chains rattle and tumble away into outer dark, he becomes free again. Reborn. To prevent himself from falling again into bondage, he tries to build defences around himself. So what does he do? He allows in yet another fear. This time, it is not the fear that he is undone because of his present circumstances but that in a yet uncreated and unknown time, something else will go wrong and he will be broken again. Thus he lives in a cycle in which the past is rehearsed, time and time again. He becomes enslaved by what has not yet come. I have seen it many times.<br /><br />Also, it became clear to him now that it wasn’t he alone who harboured hatred or a full pitcher of resentment from which, every step or so in its rough journey on the worn path of life, a drop or two spilled. It was many people, perhaps everyone in the land, everyone in Alaigbo, or even everyone in the country in which its people live, blindfolded, gagged, terrified. Perhaps every one of them was filled with some kind of hatred. Certainly. Surely an old grievance, like an immortal beast, was locked up in an unbreakable dungeon of their hearts. They must be angry at the lack of electricity, at the lack of amenities, at the corruption. </i> </blockquote><br /><br />Where I felt it did not succeed so well, at least for my own enjoyment, was when the chi character itself and its own parallel cosmological world took prominence - lacking any real context (and with the author seemingly unwilling to provide it) I often found myself skipping these sections (especially a lengthy sectional the end to the Cypriot part of the novel which ultimately seems to lead nowhere) in a mix of bewilderment and impatience. <br /><br /><blockquote> <i>I was again mystified by the fact that, despite the dozen or so childish spirits playing, a market went on undisrupted below them. The market continued to teem with women haggling, people driving in cars, a masquerade swinging through the place to the music of an uja and the sound of an ekwe. None of them was aware of what was above them, and those above paid no heed to those below, either. I had been so carried away by the frolicking spirits that the masquerade and its entourage were gone by the time I returned to my host. Because of the fluidity of time in the spirit realm, what may seem like a long time to man is in fact the snap of a finger. This was why, by the time I was back into him, he was already in his van driving back to Umuahia. Because of this distraction, I was unable to bear witness to everything my host did at the market, and for this I plead your forgiveness.. </i> </blockquote><br /><br />I often struggled to see this element of the book as much more than a unnecessary and only partly forgivable distraction from the power of the main story. <br /><br />I also felt that a recurring theme, of a Gosling that Chinoso raised as a child, simultaneously loving but holding in captivity, but which was then stolen from him and which he destroyed while taking revenge; was rather over-laboured.<br /><br />Stronger though was the link between the distress of the poultry during the hawk attack, and other traumatic incidents, and the helplessness of Chinoso and others in the face of oppression and injustice. <br /><br /><blockquote> <i>Er-he, Nonso, I have been wondering all day: what is the sound that the chickens were making after the hawk took the small one? It was like they all gathered –er, together.’ She coughed, and he heard the sound of phlegm within her throat. ‘It was like they were all saying the same thing, the same sound.’ He started to speak, but she spoke on. ‘It was strange. Did you notice it, Obim?’ ‘Yes, Mommy,’ he said. ‘Tell me, what is it? Is it crying? Are they crying?’ He inhaled. It was hard for him to talk about this phenomenon because it often moved him. For it was one of the things that he cherished about the domestic birds –their fragility, how they relied chiefly on him for their protection, sustenance, and everything. In this they were unlike the wild birds. ‘It is true, Mommy, it is cry,’ he said. ‘Really?’ ‘That is so, Mommy.’ ‘Oh, God, Nonso! No wonder! Because of the small one—’ ‘That is so.’ ‘That the hawk took?’ ‘That is so, Mommy.’ ‘That is very sad, Nonso,’ she said after a moment’s quiet. ‘But how did you know they were crying?’ ‘My father told me. He was always saying it is like a burial song for the one that has gone. He called it Egwu umu-obereihe. You understand? I don’t know umu-obere-ihe in English.’ ‘Little things,’ she said. ‘No, minorities.’ ‘Yes, yes, that is so. That is the translation my father said. That’s how he said it in English: minorities. He was always saying it is like their “okestra”.’ ‘Orchestra,’ she said. ‘O-r-c-h-e-s-t-r-a.’ ‘That is so, that is how he pronounced it, Mommy. He was always saying the chickens know that is all they can do: crying and making the sound ukuuukuu! Ukuuukuu!’ </i> </blockquote><br /><br />Overall a book which while not entirely successful represents a worthy and ambitious second novel.