Author of ‘The Revolution Generation’, Abimbola Alaba thinks writing is just like sculpting. ‘There must be a mound of something—clay or wax or stone—to carve and chisel into a semblance of art.’
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
I was fascinated by magic and fantasy, and devoured everything by Enid Blyton whose books held the doors of literature wide open for me to run through. I remember walking up to the librarian in my first year of secondary school and handing over a list of books I felt the library’s collection was sorely missing.
I complained to a friend, Tope Oladimeji, when I’d run out of Blytons to read and he lent me his copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as a stopgap. I went through it in one evening, and returned a bonafide reader. JK Rowling’s books eventually had such an effect that my father nicknamed me Harry Bim.
The first work of African Literature that arrested me was Camara Laye’s The African Child. I soon discovered An African Night’s Entertainment by Cyprian Ekwensi and delved further into literary African fiction—Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Kola Onadipe’s Koku Baboni stand out. I am and was fascinated by mythologies and the Tales of Troy and Greece, and Daniel O Fagunwa’s Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó Irúnmọlẹ̀ were firm favourites.
What book from your childhood would you pass on to someone younger?
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