“A thoroughly modern epic but with bones as old as time. This is a story of love and betrayal and madness and music that is all the more beautiful for its plainspoken poignancy. Yet there is prose in here that steals your breath away.” — The Gerald Kraak Prize, 2016 your life is a blooming […]
Short Story: You Sing of a Longing Read More »
“Mulumba” was first published in The Threepenny Review’s Spring 2016 issue 145. They don’t seem to be planning to make it public so I have. I wrote it in November 2014, a tribute to my Block Rosary Crusade-heavy childhood, years spent in chapels in Christ the King Cathedral, Aba (featured photo). It is special to
Mulumba: Short Story Read More »
A boy’s ears should be busy during Easter. Check out my previous lists—for 2017, for 2018, and a playlist & thoughts. “Ratchet (Happy Birthday),” Drake Friend played it at my birthday and it got me. First Drake solo song I love. “Summertime Magic,” Donald Glover From the Guava Island film, which has Rihanna, which means
I like the word “feast.” The sound of it, the upper teeth touching the lower lip. I like when it is used in titles of things. I want it when it comes like this. Mario Vargas Llosa was one of the first writers I knew their names and work, back in 2011 when I
The Feast of the Goat Read More »
In December, I was at The Writers’ Community (TWC) in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka for a prose workshop. It was where we started: Arinze Ifeakandu, Chisom Okafor, Ebenezer Agu, Osinachi, Michael Umoh, Uzoma Ihejirika, Festus Iyorah, Adaeze Nwadike, Pius Ifechukwu. Without TWC, there might be no me in the way that I am.
TWC Prose Workshop in Nsukka Read More »
Sunday nightfall, I’m bored—actually I feel like munching succulent bread and Vita Milk—so Friend and I go to Spar. We are surprised to see a crowd: a concert is on, a #DefendYourVote initiative, and on the poster are Phyno, Peruzzi, and Naeto C. I’ve never seen Phyno live, or anybody I really want to
A Pop Concert by Chance Read More »
Literature I have been touring the 2018 archives of African literary magazines for a Brittle Paper project. I resumed reading Miles Morland’s memoir Cobra in the Bath, which is full of humour. But Richard Tarnas’ study of Western intellectual history The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World
6 Things This Week Read More »
First written on 11 August, 2016, on Facebook. Monk. Astronomer. Artist. Architect. Priest. Psychologist. Lawyer. Monk. Historian. Writer. Physicist. Painter. Actor. Activist. Academic. These, at different times in my life, are the things I have wanted to be, or have been pushed to be, or now am, or know that I would one day
Monk. Astronomer. Artist Read More »
Written on 25 August, 2016, on Facebook. Strange. In the past few days, I’ve taken to replaying Aaliyah—“Try Again,” “More Than a Woman,” “We Need a Resolution”—only to make an unexpected discovery today: that today, August 25, is the 15th anniversary of her death. She died in a plane crash, in 2001. Even though
A Night with Aaliyah Read More »
I am with friends, those ones who have become family, when I realize that the book on the marble table is John Berger’s and our faces, my heart, brief as photos. A small white book whose particular existence, out in the world and in this room, I have been unaware of. It lies there, beside
A Bit of John Berger Read More »