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Nigerian novelist and author of I Do Not Come to You by Chance, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, decided to write her first novel before knowing what to write about: ‘The story wasn’t burning in my heart or bursting to be let loose on the page. It didn’t feel like there was this one story that I had to tell. But I have always been fascinated by why people do the things they do. While trying to come up with ideas for my novel, I decided on a story that explored that.’
‘Follow your heart’ is not just unwise counsel; it is a recipe for anarchy. Imagine a world where each of us followed our heart to wherever it led us, without caring for the people around us or the laws of the land.
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About the Author
is a Nigerian novelist, journalist, essayist, and humorist. Her debut novel, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, is set in intriguing world of Nigeria’s ‘419’ email scammers. It won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a 2010 Betty Trask First Book award, was a finalist for the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, and was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Books of the Year. Her debut Young Adult novel, Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree, is based on dozens of interviews with women and girls kidnapped by terrorist group, Boko Haram. It won the 2018 Raven Award for Excellence in Arts and Entertainment, was named as one of the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults, is a Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2019 selection, a Junior Library Guild selection, and was shortlisted for the 2019 NLNG Nigeria Literature Prize. Nwaubani’s impactful reportage and essays have appeared in scores of publications, including: The New Yorker, New York Times, and Guardian. She writes a monthly column for the BBC’s ‘Letter from Africa’, published online and broadcast on the World Service radio.
Nigerian novelist, poet and author of Graceland, Chris Abani, does not believe ‘Nigerian literature’ exists as a category: ‘It is a common misconception that there is a fixed category that can be read as essentially “Nigerian literature”. Nigeria has 500 nations, 500 languages and about 2,000 dialects. While culture and language can overlap, the level of diversity is such that Nigerian literature cannot be easily narrowed down.’
For the co-founder and publishing director, of Cassava Republic Press, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, it is telling that African literature is often pronounced dead in recent years, when more women and queer voices are becoming more prominent: ‘The loudest obituary writers about African literature tend to be men. These elegies seem to come from a tacit sense of personal or generational displacement rather than from the actual state of the field.’
Nigerian poet, novelist and author of Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-Hearted, Ben Okri, argues that Nigerian literature doesn’t always have to be about Nigeria: ‘Nigerian literature limits itself to Nigeria and then limits even the ways in which the country can be written about. What we want is a vast literature, a great literature…that speaks to all humanity.’
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