Buchi Emecheta : The bride price

Aku-nna (« my father’s wealth » in igbo language) is a young teenager living a peaceful life in Lagos, the Nigerian metropolis with her carefree brother Nna-Ndo, her mother Ma Blackie and her father. The latter who served as a soldier in the British colonial army and came back from faraway fronts with a recurrent handicap on his leg, is now working as the head of casting department in the Nigerian railways society. Aku-nna is a brilliant student whose hope is to make a good marriage to make her father proud. But soon that loving and caring father died from the deterioration of his old war wound.

“With our father gone, there will be no more school for me [school is over for me]” thought Aku-nna and she couldn’t be more right.

Buchi Emecheta introduces us step by step (progressively) to the remains of tradition in the igbo burial ceremony in Lagos, the solidarity that naturally takes place as well that the hypocrisy behind some behaviors. Then the author takes us to the countryside where the Odia family is forced to move, they settle in Ibuza at Okonkwo’s, the eldest brother of the late Ezechiel Odia.

In that context, with the man very attached to tradition that is her uncle, the frail and sickly Aku-nna discovers a very rigid and male chauvinist society. The reference to Okonkwo, the eccentric and also extremely attached to tradition character from Chinua Achebe’s novel may be intended. In this novel, Uncle Okonkwo is interested in his own social ascent within the clan and counts on Aku-nna’s dowry as soon as she’ll start growing up into a woman. Meanwhile the girl becomes attracted to a young teacher whose status as a slave descendant makes him a social outcast.

This novel brings back the questions Chinua Achebe already rose in “Things Fall apart”, i.e the possibility of questioning some flaws of the traditional igbo culture. The subject of caste, for instance. The main difference here lies in the fact that the outside look is not one of an occidental missionary but coming from a young African girl herself raised in an African city. Unlike Léonora Miano’s character, Aku-nna does not reject her entire culture. But she disapproves of forced marriage and the ostracism that leads to Chike’s family being banished from the society. Buchi Emecheta also analyzes the impact of both magical and religious beliefs on the subconscious and how they somehow freeze things up so much, even when there seems to be a tiny bit of freedom for the people

Buchi Emecheta takes us to a journey through this story of which tone and rhythm are perfectly under control.

A very beautiful novel indeed.

Article original traduit du français par  Titilayo Agbahey

Buchi Emecheta, The bride price 

Ed. George Braziller 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a yellow sun

Biafra is one name engraved in the subconscious of many nations. The Biafra War marks the first steps of humanitarian work with what has been called the French Doctors of the dawning Médecins Sans Frontières going to the rescue of Biafra people starving because of the blocus imposed by the Nigerian federal government. To Congolese people, “Biafra” refers to a bloody episode of the country’s story. The word does refers to insurrection. Memories of Biafra, a tiny ephemeral country which seceded from the giant republic of Nigeria and fought for its freedom during four years.

Tous droits réservés par simakorenivski

That bloody page of the Nigerian history is precisely the topic of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel. Her very controlled and compact style takes the characters to two different times: the beginning of the 60’s just after the African independences where the author progressively sets the characters of the novel and the social and political context. Then she takes the reader to the end of the 60’s with the roaring conflict and the evolution of the different characters.

I won’t introduce those characters, not because I don’t want to, but I’ve really being fascinated by the construction of each figure, the tragedy behind the trajectories, the encounters, the injuries, the splits, the disappearances, the hopes and madness…I wouldn’t be able to stop if I had to make a description. [You wonder what to say after finishing reading some novels but in this case everything was cristal clear] You got my enthusiasm about this book. It’s about two twin sisters from a wealthy igbo family during the first ten years of the independent Nigeria.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie first evokes the happy days following the independence. The story is subtly counted and illustrated with the ardor of the local intelligentsia who argues endlessly, theorizes that new Africa and denounces the first forms of corruption. But they underestimate the ramping evil left by the former British colonial power which opposed the ancient precolonial nations: the hausa people in the north, Muslim and undereducated on one side and the southeast igbo, Christianized and overflowing with senior executives, entrepreneurs, traders on the other side. After a coup d’état led by igbo militaries, the first massacres perpetrated in the north cast a shadow over the country. People wake up to the tough reality of a divided country where the biafran secession is a try to recapture a nation weakened by the colonial dividing as decided in Berlin in 1885. The biafran military bravery is confronted with the suffering of its people facing hunger, diseases and bombings. Chimamanda turns back the clock of history without ever letting the reader get lost within the story of the characters caught in torment.

This book is my heartthrob and a lucid reflection about the 60’s Nigeria.

Article original traduit du français par Titilayo Agbahey

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a yellow sun