Revival booking place in Nigeria
LAGOS — Mention Nigerian literature and the first names likely to spring to mind are Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart, or the venerable Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka.
But Africa’s most populous nation has a new crop of writers whose work is a far cry from the post-colonial era of their esteemed predecessors.
Olumide Popoola’s novel When We Speak of Nothing, for example, tells the story of a gay teenager seeking the father he never knew in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt.
The book, which was published earlier this year, is written in a language mixing African pidgin with London slang, and includes comical descriptions and textspeak.
For Emeka Nwankwo, from Nigerian publisher Cassava Republic, breaking conventions and expectations about literature is a way of reflecting how the country has changed.
“We are looking for an alternative way to tell African stories, funny, subversive stories,” he said.
“What’s going on now in Nigeria is very fascinating. New voices are coming out after a long period of quiet.”
The most famous voice to emerge in recent years is the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who made her name with Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and Americanah (2013).
Both stories have since been translated into dozens of languages while the first was adapted for cinema in 2013.
Thirst for literature
Cassava Republic, which was launched in 2006 in Abuja and now has an office in London, is leading the literary revolution with other local publishers such as Farafina and Bookcraft.
In just over a decade, it has published some 50 books. The bestseller, In Dependence, by Sarah Ladipo Manyika, has sold 1.7 million copies in Nigeria and overseas.
No genre is excluded from Cassava Republic and it has published books from science fiction and crime to homosexuality and eroticism.
The literary revival in Nigeria has seen more bookshops springing up in working-class areas and shopping centers across the country.
It is also taking off online. E-book application Okadabooks has some 200,000 users and 1 million downloads.
“There is a thirst for literature in Nigeria and publishers are now responding,” said Lola Shoneyin, who organizes the Ake Festival every November.
The event, held in Abeokuta, has become a must for booklovers, many of them under the age of 30.