Yet another young Nigerian receives rave reviews for a first novel.   Uzodinma Iweala’s "Beast of No Nation" is about a young precocious gentle who is boy recruited as a guerrilla fighter in the midst of a civil war - source: Moorish Girl. 

"The preteen protagonist is molded into a fighting man by his demented guerrilla leader and, after witnessing his father’s savage slaying, by an inchoate need to belong to some kind of family, no matter how depraved. He becomes a killer, gripped by a muddled sense of revenge as he butchers a mother and daughter when his ragtag unit raids a defenseless village; starved for both food and affection, he is sodomized by his commandant and rewarded with extra food scraps and a dry place to sleep"

REVIEW

Iweala’s Beast of No Nation is a vivid journey into a dark and frightening experience, that of a child soldier.  The  narrative is told through Agu, a young boy who runs away as his village is under attack from soldiers.  He is later caught by a band of wretched rebel soldiers.  The reader becomes at one with Agu as we taste, feel, hear, smell and see the violence through his words. Agu’s story moves between the present world of unimaginable cruelty and violence and the past where he lived in the security and love of his parents and sister.  The past represented by being a "good boy" who is top of his class and loved by all whilst the present is "bad boy" where he is a killer and both rapist and rape victim.  Agu constantly battles between the before and now as Iweala shows us that a world view that is based on good and evil is inadequate.  For most of us  life’s experiences are full of contradictions and confusions and sometimes we really do not have any choice but to survive any way we can.  That survival is our courage.

In other Nigerian book news, Chimamanda Adichie’s "Purple Hibiscus" has been shortlisted once again, this time for the John Llewellyn Prize for "fine young writers early in their careers from biographers, novelists and historians to travel writers, dramatists and poets". The prize will be awarded on the 1st December. Source: Musings of a Naijaman

Tags:Literature     Africa Nigeria   Books

An interesting interview here with Nigerian author Helon Habila on the future of writing in Africa.  Helon Habila was the winner of the first Caine Prize for African Writing.

"How African is African Literature when it is written in English?"