Author of ‘Zombiescapes’ and ‘For the People Without the People’, Dafe Oputu, believes the importance of political representation is understated. ‘It’s literally a matter of life and death—people die in Nigeria every day because of lack of political representation.’
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
I read a lot growing up, mostly young adult fiction and especially sci-fi/fantasy. Authors like Gordon Korman, K.A. Applegate, Douglas Adams, and J.K. Rowling. The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Ridell was a favourite of mine and I even tried my hand at writing my own fantasy worlds and scribbling poor imitations of Ridell’s fantastic illustrated maps.
When I was 13, a teacher recommended The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and it remains my favourite book series even today. I still own an omnibus volume and I can really flip to any page and just start reading, it’s so enjoyable. I had a reputation in my family for being an avid reader so I would often get gifted classics by Charles Dickens or Chinua Achebe, but I found these too serious at the time and didn’t grow to appreciate them until much later when I was in university.
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond was my gateway into reading more history and social science books. Diamond gets a lot of warranted criticism for being a bit of an armchair historian and meddling in a lot of fields he doesn’t fully understand. But it’s a very well-written book and its main argument—that geography goes a long way to explaining why much of what we consider modern arose in Europe and Asia—is convincing if not taken too far.
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