Chigozie Obioma: A wake-up call to Nigeria
Chigozie Obioma is less interested in the Booker Prize trophy he might have won than the lifeblood the shortlist offered his novel The Fishermen – inciting interest in his literary work, but also questions on the state of a nation: Nigeria
Things fall apart. A truism of life. Nations, families, individuals; whether through a civilisation’s crumbling mortar, an unravelling of social thread, or, in the case of Chigozie Obioma’s outstanding debut novel The Fishermen, the unbearable weight of words. Things fall apart.
Obioma’s hopes of winning the 2015 Booker Prize fell apart on 13 October. He was among the five losing shortlisters as Marlon James gathered the trophy for A Brief History of Seven Killings. If you watch the televised coverage of the plush and pretentious ceremony, the 28 year old Obioma is shown smiling and relaxed; it's doubtful he was overly affected by the result. “The biggest thing a writer can ask for is that a book be read,” he suggests towards the end of our interview, conducted months before the bow ties and bubbly and showing a healthy detachment from such trivialities and baubles. He has simpler, purer aims. “... I didn’t write it for myself,” he says. “I didn’t write it to decorate my room. I want people to read it.”
When we speak, back in the summer, the Booker longlist has just recently been announced. Obioma's resulting coyness at our congratulations sits in stark contrast to the strong and insightful answers offered throughout the rest of our time. Perhaps he’s simply modest? Yet, at this suggestion he quickly reverts to his previous mode of assured certainty. “No, I’m trying to be as successful as possible,” he says. “The truth is it was unexpected. It would be crazy for you to have a debut novel and be hoping for the Booker Prize. But it’s very welcome news... Nobody was talking about it [The Fishermen] anymore. It was almost out of conversation. But the Booker mention has a way of popping new life into it. For that I am extremely grateful.” And, true to that statement we are talking about his book here and now. As are many others.
The power of storytelling
Born and raised in Nigeria, Chigozie Obioma travelled abroad to study, and now returns the favour as an overseas educator – first completing a bachelor’s degree in Cyprus before becoming Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In the flesh he is easy to warm to; erudite and flawlessly mannered. Today, dressed in a sharply cut blue blazer with a stately looking crest stitched to its breast pocket – we neglect to ask whether this serves a function or is simply ornament. Throughout our conversation he tackles grand issues head-on (specifically Nigeria’s) but punctuates his weighty words with smiles and hearty laughter. A natural storyteller on page and in person, he respects that age-old craft over ostentatious technique. “One can get lost in trying to do something experimental with fiction and not have the core, the spine which is the story,” he explains at one point. The power of storytelling is a lesson learned as a sickly child on his hospital bed. “… my dad took it upon himself to stay with me during these periods,” he remembers. “So, he was always telling these stories. I just discovered I loved hearing these make believe worlds, tales of people who existed once before.” He believed these stories were of his father's making, then later came the revelation. “… when I was well and at home, one day I remember dad was back from work and very tired and I was like, man, tell me a story, is it only when I am ill that you tell me one? …and he was like, just read them yourself, and pulled a book from his shelf… It was a big discovery for me, I was so happy that I don’t need to wait for him, so I began to read.”
And of course to write. To write a novel aligned with the reality of contemporary Nigeria but steeped in its ancient myths. Obioma lists certain beliefs of his Igbo people and the other tribes which make up the modern nation. He tells of the hunter, “…who gives up his manhood, his ability to copulate with a woman to be able to have extraordinary human strength. We have myths about the creation of the world... We have myths about how daylight came to be, you know, just about every element in the world.” The Fishermen is the story of a family. It is the story of a country. It can be read as one or both – the metaphor as subtle as it is strong. Four close brothers, the fishermen, encounter a madman as they return home one day. His frenzied prophecy that one of them will kill another deals a mortal blow, a crack which spreads violently to divide brother from brother. Obioma wrote the book as a tribute to his own many brothers – he comes from a large family who he says could easily form football teams from selected siblings – but also, he states on the book;'s inside cover, as ‘a wake-up call to a dwindling nation.’
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‘The madman has entered our house with violence, defiling our sacred grounds, claiming the single truth of the universe.’ These words of South African poet Mazisi Kunene also adorn The Fishermen's introductory pages and prophesise the book’s tragedy by recounting history. “So here he is actually talking about the Europeans who came to Africa and colonised the people,” says Obioma. “Same with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. When the British forces came the Africans were laughing at them, they were like, these guys are just mad people, they have a woman as their leader, how can you have a woman? …because we were very patriarchal. And they believe in one God. Instead we have Gods for thunder, for water, for everything. So we thought they were actually crazy people. But in the end of the day the madman overpowers them and enslaves them.”
This forms the crux of the novel, and, for Chigozie Obioma, the story of Nigeria itself. Because often in life, things really do fall apart, ‘the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,’ claims Yeats in The Second Coming, earlier in the poem writing that ‘The falcon cannot hear the falconer.’ In The Fishermen, the boy’s mother is likened to a falconer. She tries in vain to guide her children as the boys fly ever further out of reach. Obioma says that “At the same time that I was plotting the novel, I was reading Will Durant's [The Story of] Civilisation, where he says that a civilisation cannot be destroyed from the outside, it has to come from within,” although the seed of doubt may have origins elsewhere. As it did in Nigeria’s history, the novel suggests.
Be a nation
“We were disparate states, then one day the British come and say 'be a nation,' and we follow. It was just one word. They have gone more than 50 years now and we still continue to run that country.” Modern Nigeria originated from British colonial rule, the merging of states and lands, peoples and tribes. The British worked to seal any splits, offering support to Federal Nigeria during the brutal civil war of 1967-70, when an Eastern state declared itself The Republic of Biafra and attempted to break away – a picture painfully drawn in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s epic novel Half of a Yellow Sun. “That is a problem,” Obioma suggests of the existing national arrangement. “…because Nigeria does not have the facility to be one country. I’m not calling for chaos but I do believe that the people of Nigeria do not feel the sense of ownership of the country. It’s a foreign idea to them, it remains a foreign idea.” He talks of an entity where soldiers prioritise salary over country and leaders merely wish to enrich themselves. “Everyone has allegiance to their tribe and their families and their kindred, but to the country? No. So I feel like there should be a sort of dismantling of Nigeria. We could have a referendum for example. Let’s just destroy the idea first and then we can decide for ourselves.”
“If you look at most European countries after the Second World War for example, they all achieved national integration first, before sovereignty.” Obioma continues. “That means that the French were already French before they started France. But the reverse is the case in most colonial countries. We already had Nigeria before we started trying to become Nigerians, and we are still struggling to be Nigerians.”
‘We were fishermen,’ the novel begins in reflective past tense, viewed through the prism of memory. Obioma uses this current moment as an example of times altering nature. He describes how our perecption of it will change over time. If he documented its truths now they would vary from the meanings attached in recollection. “Just that one stain on your collar, or a fly perching on your shirt… memory transforms it and it becomes more formidable in every way than when it is documentary.” This is why it became necessary to travel before allowing himself to look back upon his own country. “My philosophy rests on one thing the Igbos say. There’s a particular type of drum, which we believe if I’ve beaten the drum here you won’t hear it, it’ll just be messy. But if you are at the other end of the street you hear it clearer.” What that means, Obioma clarifies, is that “... when you break from something you see it clearer. If you are with someone every day… you don’t really miss them. When you miss them is when you begin to remember the snippets of conversation… oh, you know, this is the shoe he or she might be wearing now. So, I love that perspective that distance gives.” And so, while sitting on distant shores and considering his country, things did not fall apart for this most exciting young novelist. They fell into place.