In Conversations: Onyeka Nwelue speaks to Fred Apugo
In Conversations: Onyeka Nwelue talks to Isi Akahome
In Conversations: Onyeka Nwelue talks to Sharon Ezeamaka
Post navigation
R.I.P. Remi Osholake (Remi Lagos)
In Pictures: Ice Prince's birthday party…the champagne campaign
Burning the Gods: Andrew Eseimokumo Oki (Interview)
Interviews onyeka.nwelue November 1, 2012 4
Young writers dream about a career like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s. Few are ready to work hard like her. However, there are still many of those young writers who are working very very hard, yet, nothing happens.   Somehow, Andrew Eseimokumo Oki is very different. Born in Nigeria in May, 1983 and grew up in Agbor, his hometown Patani, Ibadan where he spent six years in boarding school; Lagos, Benin City and Warri, he is a graduate of English Language and Literature from the University of Benin, Nigeria.
Now 29, Andrew Eseimokumo Oki has become one of the leading voices of the Nigerian literary scene with a first book, Bonfires of the Gods , a novel about genocide in Warri, first published in India by Serene Woods.
While we wait for the Nigerian release of Bonfires of the Gods from GriotsLounge, to be out this month, we decided to talk to him about his writing, style, India and humanism.
ONYEKA NWELUE: While I read your book, I was conscious about the language. You seem to be the kind of writer who will always think of the right words to choose to describe some certain things. But I remember asking myself if it was because you studied English Language or a conscious trait as a writer, building up a style?
ANDREW ESEIMOKUMO OKI: You are right Onyeka. I do try to use the right words to describe whatever I am writing about. It is after all through the written medium that our stories, as writers, are told. Using the right words is very vital to my art of storytelling. My aim first of all is to tell a story that everyone can read and understand. I do not bother myself too much with embellishments or whether or not I have a certain license to just put down all the words in the English Dictionary simply because I want to. The story is vital to me and the medium through which I tell that story is just as important. And NO, this is NOT because I studied the English Language. It is a deliberate quality I have as a writer. And it does help me build up my style even though style for me is not just about my diction.
It’s funny how people are so quick to attribute my writing abilities to my university major in English Language. That however is not the case. I started writing in my secondary school. I chose to major in English Language and Literature because I recognized early that I needed to be better in the language of my art’s medium. Nigeria has been fortunate to have produced great writers from generations past and just a handful of them majored in English Language.
ONYEKA NWELUE: People who have read your book will agree with me that there is element of serenity with your style. You move slowly, coining words, building up tension, glorifying death, exalting genocide in a very lucid and poignant way. Are you going to do this in your next book?
ANDREW ESEIMOKUMO OKI: Onyeka, I do actually love your choice of words in describing my style but there is more to my style than is exhibited in “Bonfires of the gods” which demanded all of the attributes you have noted. The element of serenity is derived from the fact that there was indeed a certain kind of serenity as the story begins and unfolds until that is taken away and replaced by some other feeling. I will admit that I am a sucker for fluidity in storytelling. I take the term “hook, line and sinker” quite literally. Growing up we were taught that the basis of a good story is one that has a beginning, middle and an end; that is my definition of “hook, line and sinker”. But beyond that, a story is ‘life in action’. I want my readers to experience it just as strongly as I did while writing. I want them to smell, feel, see and hear everything as I have in my mind’s eye. It’s good you felt the tension rise and fall because it was just the way I felt it while I was writing. There were times I shed a tear or two for a dying character. Maybe this is why it is so easy to make out the humanism in my style. Words, like I said, are my only medium of conveyance so I am always careful with the ones I eventually choose to use.
You speak of the glorification of death, of the exaltation of genocide in lucid and poignant ways. Genocide is a crime committed by man against humanity but for the man, woman and child who are taken by genocide we must make their deaths count. It’s always hard to go back into a bad time and try to relive it but as a writer it is our commission to do so whether or not in the end we make the re-enactment of murder and crime look or seem glorified. A person who is dead knows peace at last. I do not aim to exalt genocide but I do believe that death is both tranquil for the passing and tough for those left behind to mourn them. In my next book I will let the story guide me. But certain elements of my style as you have noticed in “Bonfires of the gods” are bound to resurface. But at the end of the day the theme of the story is always the determining factor for how the story itself would be sharpened.
ONYEKA NWELUE: Would you say the process of getting published was difficult for you? And why did you take that trip to India? Can you tell us about India and what you saw there?
ANDREW ESEIMOKUMO OKI: Wow! It is a good thing you brought this up. I would shout it to the ends of the earth the difficulties in getting published in Nigeria. It is the same difficulty that has chased most of our good authors out of the shores of Nigeria to seek publishing elsewhere. I started writing when I was about 13 and that was also when the struggle began. I eventually gave up trying to face my studies when I got into the university. I never stopped writing though. After a long hiatus during which time I maintained my secret stash of completed-but-never-submitted manuscripts India smiled upon me. I did not go to India to get published. In fact “Bonfires of the gods” was just six chapters in when I made that trip. I just got the opportunity to travel and experience a new culture and I jumped at it. It was while there I met with the young publisher from Serene Woods. And the rest, they say, is history. I could go on and on and on and on about India and I would just keep going. India was the perfect getaway. It was an eye-opener. It confounded beliefs and filled me with new ones. New ideas. New horizons I only would have imagined possible while watching Z Cinema on cable.
While in India I travelled from Mumbai across the southern plans through Lonavla to Pune; through Pune to Goa; through Goa to Bangalore and then all the way back to Mumbai’ sometimes spending 20 hours on the road travelling all night long. My journeys did not stop there. It took me through the countryside once again to Ahmedabad and then finally to New Delhi.
I saw the contrast between the rich and the poor in physical play and saw how much the non-existent caste system affected their lives. I saw the diversity of their many gods and how they all boiled down to one Hinduism. I saw the invisible but present battle between the Muslims and the Hindus. The Hindus and the Catholics. The Catholics and the Muslims. And then everyone in-between. I saw the power of Bollywood and believed for a fact that Bollywood was indeed the world’s money-maker in contemporary cinema. I saw the stereotypes of black Africans and experienced its firm grip first-hand when, one day while sitting in an auto-rickshaw (Kekenapep) waiting for an India friend of mine in the lush neighbourhood of Bandra West, a posh car parked beside me and right from within it a known Bollywood star demanded I sold him cocaine simply because I was black African. It was all these and more that finally inspired me to start work on my next novel. And it was research for the new book that took me into the interview room of the Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai where Nigerians are rotting away with little or no hope for a return back home.
ONYEKA NWELUE: Sectarian riots occur all the time in Nigeria. Religious leaders have no solution to these problems. Is there a way we can align to find solution to our problems through fiction?
ANDREW ESEIMOKUMO OKI: Apart from sectarian riots, Nigeria is plagued with so many other vices. From corruption to bad governance; from religious fanaticism and killings in the Northern parts of the country to the rise of terrorists sects; from petty crimes to mob lynching and injustice in the highest order and in all of this fiction has ALWAYS had a huge say in everything that goes on in the society. Fiction writers have always proffered solutions to societal vices from the beginning of the literary revolution in Nigeria and we are still doing just that. But there is more that can be done and with time we will help find more solutions to problems in Nigeria.
ONYEKA NWELUE: What is the next for this book? Film rights? Translation rights? International release and whatnot? What is happening with it?
ANDREW ESEIMOKUMO OKI: Everything! But most importantly I just want the book to be as widely available as it could possibly be. Right now I have signed a book-deal with one of Nigeria’s newest publishers, Griots Lounge, for the re-release of “Bonfires of the gods”. I’m overwhelmed by the positive responses I’ve gotten from reviews so far and I cannot wait for it to be out in bookstores. Fingers crossed!
ONYEKA NWELUE: Apart from writing, what else do you do?
ANDREW ESEIMOKUMO OKI: Apart from writing I am a civil servant with a federal polytechnic somewhere in Nigeria.
ONYEKA NWELUE: Someone recently compared your work to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and I thought it was a lazy analogy. However, how does it feel to be compared to Ms Adichie?
ANDREW ESEIMOKUMO OKI: It was indeed a lazy analogy but it was good to be compared to someone I truly respect and admire. I do not want to sound as though I am kissing up to Ms Adichie but she has been someone I have watched and learned from over the course of her career progress. I do not yet see the similarities in our style other than the fact that we are both humanist authors but I do respect and adore her as writer.
ONYEKA NWELUE: Fiction is a landscape which exists for writers with powerful imagination. It is also believed to be a channel through which one can escape his imperious realities. What is fiction to you?
ANDREW ESEIMOKUMO OKI: Fiction is both for me. But more importantly fiction is beautiful reportage of life itself from the author’s eyes or point of view.
ONYEKA NWELUE: Is there a particular incident that happened on which you centred this story?
ANDREW ESEIMOKUMO OKI: Yes. Inspiration for “Bonfires of the gods” was drawn from a series of events that occurred in the city of Warri, Nigeria from 1997 to 2003. Most of the characters and incidents in the story are though fictitious, but they are not far-fetched from events that actually occurred. Some of which I experienced first-hand.
Bonfires of the Gods is out this month from GriotsLounge.
Don't forget to share:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
More
Email
Tumblr
Pinterest
Like this:
Like Loading…
Related