A review of Izang Alexander Haruna’s ‘Letters to 42 Writers’
I read novels the way some people listen to rap, half-focused, following the rhythm until something stops me cold. A phrase. A character who reminds me of someone I knew once, or thought I knew, or dreamed about. This is not efficient. But efficiency has never been the point of reading. So, there I was, […]
When gods stumble among us: A review of Oyin Olugbile’s Sanya
I once spent an afternoon at Iyanoba, skimming through the collection of those people who sell books on the ground. They would pick one open space, arrange the books on the ground, the kind where the books lean against each other like tired commuters on a danfo. The owner, a man who claimed to have […]
What you can afford to lose: A review of Aliyu Yakubu’s Abandoned
The orange cat arrived on the same Wednesday as Aliyu Yakubu’s Abandoned. Every morning, at seven, it sits by my compound’s gate, waiting for what? Food, shelter, and someone who will never return. Yesterday, I wondered if it had read these stories, because it understands something most of us forget — that what you are […]
On Nikki May’s This Motherless Land
Last Sunday evening, I closed Nikki May’s This Motherless Land with the peculiar feeling that I had just witnessed something between a family autopsy and a resurrection ceremony. There was that quality you find in certain Lagos afternoons when the harmattan dust settles and you can suddenly see clear to Victoria Island — except what […]
On Chigozie Obioma’s ‘The Road to the Country’
I have been thinking about wells lately. Not the kind you draw water from, but the other kind — the deep, dark spaces where we throw things we do not want to examine too closely. Memory has a way of becoming a well like that, especially when the memories involve things like war, guilt, and […]
Fantasies and realities through the lens of literature
In truth, I never realised that being an essayist would demand such uncomfortable honesty — not just about the world, but about the stories we tell ourselves to survive it. Strange, perhaps, that a form devoted to truth should begin with confession, but here we are: I have spent years watching people disappear into smoke, […]
NLNG Prize and the $100,000 question
The quickest way to destroy a writer is to judge them by awards alone. This truth haunts every creative writing classroom, where students discover that good fiction resists neat definitions and simple measurements. Awards, for all their lustre, become golden shackles — elevating individual careers while leaving the literary ecosystem that nurtured those writers barren […]
Femi Otedola: The burden of writing and privileges
Femi Otedola is releasing a book on August 18th titled ‘Making It Big’. A recent tweet claims his worst day was losing a billion dollars — ₦1.5 trillion in today’s money, roughly equivalent to Lagos State’s entire annual budget. The Nigerian internet has responded with fire. The reactions split along revealing lines. One camp dismisses […]