January 1, 2024
Two-time Booker Prize finalist (for The Fishermen and An Orchestra of Minorities) Obioma's third book traces the history of two brothers and is set against the backdrop of the 1960s civil war in Nigeria. When his brother vanishes, Kunle begins an odyssey of redemption--through war and gilded by myth. Prepub Alert.
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Starred review from June 1, 2024
A man is forced into the turmoil of Nigeria's brutal Biafran war. Adekunle Aromire--the protagonist of Booker Prize finalist Obioma's third novel--has overheard his mother saying that he's cursed. By her lights, his neglect caused a car accident that nearly killed his younger brother, Tunde, when the boys were 9 and 6. Years later, in 1967, Kunle is a recent college graduate who learns that his brother has moved with a woman to the new separatist state of Biafra; guilt-stricken and fearing for his brother's safely, Kunle volunteers with a Red Cross group, one of the few ways for a Nigerian to safely enter the region. Unfortunately, Kunle is separated from the group, found by Biafran soldiers, and compelled to join its army. Biafra's two-year war with Nigeria was a failed and notoriously brutal affair, killing hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians, and Obioma's rendition of it is distinguished in part by his unflinching writing about the violence and how Kunle "has drunk his fill of the war's raw water." In short order, he and his fellow soldiers grow hardened and demoralized, skeptically considering the generals and mercenaries who deliver their marching orders. (One is Rolf Steiner, a real-life German soldier of fortune.) The horrors are tempered by an unlikely but well-sold battlefield romance and by Kunle's commitment to fulfilling his original mission of finding Tunde. The story is also leavened by Obioma's consideration of the role of fate in all this: Interstitial chapters feature a Seer who has prophesied the novel's events. Obioma has captured the essential elements of the war novel--the near-death experience, the tragic losses, the flickering moments of generosity and grace--but he inhabits them with a rare command, empathy, and intensity of feeling. A top-tier war novel, inventive and cleareyed about the consequences of violence.
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Starred review from June 10, 2024
Obioma (An Orchestra of Minorities) explores the complexities of Nigeria’s civil war in his masterful latest. Kunle Aromire, a university student in Lagos, returns to his family’s village in 1967 to help find his brother, Tunde, 17, who disappeared after entering the secessionist territory of Biafra. Tunde, who’s been in a wheelchair since he was hit by a car when he was six, made the risky border crossing to protect a friend facing persecution for being Igbo. Kunle follows, and upon entering the territory, he’s arrested and conscripted into the Biafran army, with whom he feels “the sense of being trapped in a burning house.” After trying and failing to escape, he grows close to his comrades, including a Shakespeare-quoting poet and a devout Catholic, though he remains terrified of combat, especially given that he’s fighting on the poorly equipped losing side. He also serves alongside an Igbo woman named Agnes, whom he’s immediately attracted to. Twists and turns ensue as Kunle discovers Tunde’s fate and learns of the horrible reasons behind Agnes’s determination to fight. With heartbreaking realism, Obioma captures the dizzying atmosphere of despair, determination, and chaos surrounding the Biafran soldiers. This live-wire war story is not to be missed. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.
Starred review from June 1, 2024
"Shortly after the completion of his eight-hour vision in the early hours of March 19, 1947, the Seer, Igbala Oludamisi, made a list of all the people he encountered during the mystical journey," begins twice-Booker shortlisted Nigerian writer Obioma (An Orchestra of Minorities, 2019). Two hours after the birth of his vision's subject, the Seer visited the newborn's parents but was vehemently turned away. They should have listened, if not for their son, Kunle, then for their country which, in 20 years, is cleaved by war and genocide. Nine years later, a single incident engenders endless ripples of suffering: Kunle sends his six-year-old brother Tunde outside to spend time with their neighbor. Tunde is hit by a car, leaving him reliant on a wheelchair. Kunle's guilt and Tunde's anger dampen their brotherly bonds until Kunle is called home from university: Tunde is missing. Despite warnings of violent unrest, Kunle pursues Tunde, but is waylaid by the Biafran army. Kunle's brutal conscription is inescapable; he experiences both the best and worst of humanity (including in his own self). With confident empathy, Obioma remarkably imbues breathtaking beauty into the (quotidian) horrors of war. Beyond geographical and historical specificities here, the world's harrowing, ongoing conflagrations underscore the timeless urgency of Obioma's latest triumph.
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