Sub-editor at The Republic and author of ‘Health Versus Capitalism: Is Capitalism Making Us Sicker?’, Charles Ebikeme, believes humanity has not arrived at a proper way of valuing good health. ‘Every cost benefit analysis in health is biased, simply because we cannot effectively assign a benefit to, say, a child not getting malaria. We know there is a benefit in some general sense, in some altruistic sense. But there is a limit to our comprehension of that benefit.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
I suppose some of my earliest memories with books were with reading comic books and trying to replicate them. I read a lot of comics growing up and I always tried to draw my own versions. I remember drawing my version of a Charlie Brown comic strip. My version involved Snoopy and Charlie Brown playing baseball. I cannot recall the punchline, but at that time the images were more important to me.
DC comics were also a strong preference for me. To this day, I am still a big Superman fan. We don’t talk enough about Superman being a part of the diaspora. As a British-Nigerian, there are some types of books that seem to be a staple of the commonwealth diaspora reading diet—Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl—even Beano comics were all aggressively consumed. Calvin and Hobbes, in its simplicity and intellect. I still remember the dark fantasy imagery of The Deptford Mice read at school.
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