Biyi Bandeezy in the Heezy for Sheezy

Apologies to Biyi Bandele and Farafina (dear Anwuli too!) for this.

I know it's coming on here soooo late. But folks! I'm in Lagos... AND I have MALARIA yet again!! (Not new malaria... the same friggin one... from the SAME bloody India... which I'm still determined to go back to at least once this year mind you!)

So my forgiveness is required right now from everyone. Lol! Even from the Mister Bloody Fanutastiki himself! :)

P.S. Yes I know I am the luckiest and stupidest dog alive (simultaneously mind you) that you probably know right now.

P.P.S. But shey you understand me a little better for it at least. Not so? Let me know, even if it's just to say you've already met the very famous Mr. Biyi Bandele. He is so unbelievably cool and even Mr. F has the photos to friggin prove it!

P.P.P.S. I haven't even had the time to review his book on this very blog by the way! AND I still think it's so damn amazing, even though I only started AND finished it last week. Okay?

Will try and come back today! But I've gotta go to my very amused/ irritated/ angry doc first!

Tory plenty for this side ooooooh! Xxx

P.P.P.P.S. Okay I tried. The dumb PDF file won't even work. I knew it! I'll come back later.

THE READING IS TOMORROW AT THE BRITISH COUNCIL IN IKOYI IN LAGOS! If you would like to know details for Abuja, Kano etc etceterooo, try Jeremy Weate first and then www.kachifo.com second!

The Phoenix

Farafina is pleased to announce a reading tour by award winning writer, Chika Unigwe, author of The Phoenix.

The readings will be at:

Jazzhole, Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos (Saturday, 8 December 2007 at 5pm)

Quintessence, Falomo Shopping Centre, Ikoyi, Lagos (Friday, 14 December 2007 at 5pm)

Bookworm Bookstore, Victoria Island, Lagos (Saturday, 15 December 2007 at 5pm)

Cafe Salamander, Aminu Kano Cresent, Abuja (Tuesday, 18th December 2007 at 4pm)

Admission is free so there's no excuse. Go! Click on the flyer below in case I got any of the details wrong. Xxx

Bolanle And The 3 (Actually, 2½) Wenches

I have finally finished reading a novel that I began two weeks ago, and which I rather deceptively put on my 'Bitchy's Been Reading' list last week (albeit no one noticed) even though I had barely read the first two chapters. The list below is supposed to imply that the titles piled prettily in that corner of my blog have been gorged on and dissected by yours truly. But in fact, this has often not been the case. Take 'The State of Africa' for example. Have I finished reading it? Nooope! And does it look likely that I will go back to it anytime this year? Nooope! Or 'Riding the Iron Rooster' - Did I get past the half-way mark? No I didn't. And am I ashamed to admit it? Nooope! It's not my fault if I get all excited at the prospect of diving into a new book, only to find after the first 10 pages that, well-written or brilliantly-researched though it may be, it does not set my pulse racing, I do not connect with its characters or contents, and I find myself having to stifle a groan whenever my fingers reach for its rectangular form, despite my desperate pleas for them not to. (nota bene, my fingers appear to be the only bones in my body capable of acting on a guilty feeling)

Moving on swiftly from the revelation that I am just a big, fat phoney, I want to talk about 'Seed' - currently Item No. 2 on my list.

Aeons ago, Yukay, who I both admire and envy (my throat is the body part for feelings of jealousy), blogged about Lola Shoneyin. He didn't dedicate an entire post to her (though he has never dedicated an entire post to one singular subject), and it was only a very simple statement like "... and word on the street is that phenomenal poet Lola Shoneyin's debut novel is on its way", but there was such enthusiasm in that statement that my curiousity (think twitchy knees) was aroused. And so I started googling. (yes I know I have a problem. Please let's not lose focus?)

Anyway, on Lola Shoneyin Dot Com, I read as much as I could read on Yukay's favourite poet, and even read an excerpt from 'Seed' I think. But then I found that I was forced to leave it at that, as no dates for publication or anything of the sort were forthcoming.

Fast forward about three months, to two weeks ago, when I was sat in the agency in the midst of shitty task number three hundred and thirteen. Rooting around in their database, I stumbled upon an electronic folder marked 'SHONEYIN'. I thought I was seeing things, so I opened the folder. And then I became giddy with excitement. I became more than giddy - I was near on epileptic! I couldn't control myself! I completely forgot for several minutes that Dildo the dog was sprawled mere seconds away from me. I opened the file on impulse, read the first 3 paragraphs, and then shut the window guiltily when it suddenly dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, interns were not supposed to feast on precious, unpublished, uncopyrighted material without authorisation?

I looked around the small office, like a kid about to dive sneakily into someone else's cookie jar, and thought...

Bloody hell I want to read this thing! I want to read it now!

But what if they say NO?

But what if they say YES?

But what if they say NO and then I go ahead and then they catch me and fire me and take out adverts warning all potential future employers in the teeny tiny publishing world in Britain, the United States and beyond, to stay away from a freak of a girl called....

To cut the story (which is becoming so bloody long, I do apologise, even I am getting tired), I asked if I could read 'Seed'. They said YES and were delighted that an intern would show such active interest in one of their authors. Why? Because they are truly lovely lovely people and not the ogres I may or may not have made them out to be whilst I was working for them last week - I tend to take a lot of liberties with my story-telling, but hey it makes for good reading dunn'it?

They even let me print out a copy so that I wouldn't have to strain for hours at the tiny computer screen. And two weeks after that fateful day, I am finally able to say, that 'Seed' is just brilliant. Absobloodylutely brilliant. It is so quick, and so snappy, and so spunky, and so full of energy, that everyone and everything in it is so fantastically alive. I felt like I was watching the scenes in High Definition - not that I have yet born witness to this new wave of technology, but you know what I mean. It was everything I have imagined the High Definition experience will be, and more.

I have a tendency to give too much away when I talk about a novel like this, and so I don't want to delve too deep. But Lola Shoneyin is just so subtle and so crafty and so delightfully wicked! I love her! She has taken a scenario right out of three quarters of the Nollywood movies sitting on shop shelves in Awolowo Road and being peddled on the street in Kilburn by dodgy Chinese ladies, and has turned it into a work of sheer brilliance. Characters who, if moulded by anyone else would be so placid, so bland, so lacking in depth, are so cleverly nuanced (I said 'nuance' when talking about McEwan didn't I?) The evil older wives (who I have termed 'The Wenches' in my title) could so easily have been blacker than night, without the slightest redeeming moment or feature. But slowly and subtly, Shoneyin peels the layers off each of them, even the evil-est of them, until you are left going "HA! Good for you! But oh! How terribly unfortunate. Pele!" Even the hideous husband, whose ailing digestive system is described in the most repulsive yet laugh out loud gobsmackingly hilarious way, had a moment of sheer frailty and utter despondency towards the end, so frail and so tragic, that I felt moved to weep for him. Obviously I didn't weep, because I still thought of him as a bumbling idiot, but Shoneyin made me want to weep, even if only for a second, and that was what was so bloody fantastic about her novel.

Another thing I loved about 'Seed' was the grand, poetic dialogue that ran through the entire novel, between characters who Shoneyin tells us unequivocally from the start, are all illiterates. It wasn't until I begun to read 80% of the novel in one straight sitting yesterday afternoon, that I realised that these people, who failed to detect the hilarious sarcasm directed at them by other 'educated' individuals, were speaking to each other in Yoruba. The wives (all except for Bolanle 'the graduate') insisted on addressing their husband as "My Lord". In scenes between the 3 wenches and their own mothers or relatives, their speech was infused with such drama, with such rich imagery and structure that they could have been characters in a Yoruba parody of Shakespeare's Macbeth, or even The Bible!

Just look at this...

" 'Keep your mouth shut Iya Simisola! It is a sin to speak evil of those who are led by the Spirit!' Iya Ade warned.

'You dare tell me to shut my mouth?' Iya Funmi took a deep breath and stood up. She turned her entire body round to gaze down at Iya Ade. 'You worm. From what mound did you crawl? If not for the mighty rains, would the pigeon and the turkey find themselves shuffling for shelter beneath the same awning? You talk about sin? Did they not teach you that bearing false witness is a sin in your church? Or does the Bible you brandish like a hatchet not say that?' "

I love love loved it! And I'm sure you will too when you get to read it in... Oh I don't know how many months' time. Teehee! I am so chuffed that I got to read it this early, and so excited too! Nigerian literature is truly blazing ahead at break-neck speed. Helon Habila got it soooo wrong when he said this is "the year of the Nigerian writer". This is the decade, no, the century of the Nigerian writer. Our people are taking over oh! Xxxx

The Silver Lining in my... uh... 18th Century Cloud?

Now that legal education is done, and the 9 month holiday has begun, my appetite for literature has returned. And I'm soooo pleased it has too! Unfortunately, it's made me even more of a hermit, and in the 3 weeks I've spent in Lagos, I have been only to the following places - the hairdresser, the Nail Place, and church. I haven't even once been tempted to go hunting for carrot cake in Chocolate Royal, or duck curry in Pattaya. My books have kept me well-fed. Tis sad, but true I'm afraid. As such, I have had absolutely nothing to blog about!!

People, I have passed day after day in 'Casa Flamingo' (my bright pink home). Every morning I have devoured a splendid platter of the thinnest, most divine crepes known to mankind (courtesy of our in-house pancake whiz), injured my shoulder/wrist/groin/french manicure playing tennis, and then passed the rest of the day in a haze, with a book pressed up against my nose.

I have been in heaven!

I chose to blog today, firstly because I didn't want to be seen to be neglecting my blog (which saw me through many a boring/lonely day this past year) and secondly, because I have only just finished reading a truly fabulous book and decided I had no choice but to share my excitement.

Simi Bedford, she of 'Yoruba Girl Dancing' (which I am still to read) fame, has produced a novel timed to coincide with this year's 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. 'Not with Silver' is what it's called, and it is an epic tale (believe me, it's more than bloody epic, the thing is the size of an encyclopaedia)!!

It starts in Oyo, in the 18th century, heads to America (the homes and farms of slaveowners), and then returns to West Africa in the period running up to formal abolition. And it is spectacular!! Never having been one to pore over movies like Roots or whatever that other one with that Djimon Honsou guy was called, I couldn't believe how quickly I got into it, and how I just kept rolling along from place to place with the characters. Okay at times it might've dragged a little and become a tad preachy, but it was so incredibly detailed, and so alive, that I could not but continue.

If I'm being honest, I think what really hooked me was how well Ms Bedford seemed to know the architecture, speech, rites, custom, culture, history and personalities of Old Oyo. I confessed to be a geek a couple of posts ago, and will be a bit more specific now - I am a history geek! The true nature of my geeky interest is seldom revealed, as I am loathe to get into discussions centred on my beloved subject for the simple reason that my memory is a sieve... It's more than a sieve... it's a bottomless bucket! I can never retain anything, facts, details, nothing! And so I habitually conceal the breath of topics and periods I've covered in my academic life, simply because I muddle them all up, forget which crusader did what to which saracen, and which pope did what to which king, which king to which general, etcetera etceteroo.

When it comes to Nigerian history however, my ignorance is not feigned, it is in fact very genuine. I have never had the opportunity to study the stuff! That's the main reason why I was so taken with the Naij Documentary I blogged about aeons ago, as that was the first time the picture of modern Nigeria took on a form comprehensible to me. Ancient Nigeria, is even more difficult to access, partly because of the sheer lack of secondary sources (I am not geeky enough to try to grapple with dusty source documents, no thanks!). And so Simi Bedford's book, which literally fell into my lap (courtesy of my beloved Daunt Books - had to give a shout out to my homies there, you can find them on Marylebone High St in London), was a GOD send!!

Bedford's Old Oyo is steeped in conspiracy upon conspiracy, it's personalities are shrewd, fiercely proud people (who from her description of their kingdom, it's wealth and military prowess have every right to be so). And it is just such a phenomenal place!

Ever the lunatic, I saw myself in a silk wrapper, dancing and singing with the crowds at the wedding and few feasts she detailed, having my hair oiled and braided, and then being carried off on horseback by my tall, dark, warrior of a husband. The only thing my 18th century self took serious objection to (aside from the ritual, but not at all frivolous, killings) was the tribal marks she would've had to sport. Being of noble, and I'm sure, even royal, descent, I would have been marked at birth. And as I'm sure you know by now, Bitchy would rather die than allow any grandmother or wicked aunt scar her pretty face!

And I would of course have been far better looking than Benoist's Negress

My day dreaming aside, 'Not with Silver' was an incredible journey, and such a vivid one at that. My ignorant self learnt so much. Not only about Yoruba, but also about American, and then even Sierra Leonean (?) history. The egotistical (and inquisitive) Nigerian in me cannot but wish that Ms Bedford had devoted more than just a third of her novel to Old Oyo, and possibly even extended her reach to other Yoruba kingdoms at least (if not the entire Niger-area... hehe)! But I live in hope that someone else will, and soon too.

If no one does rise to the challenge, then me thinks I might just have to get on with it myself. Spurred on of course, by the excellent examples of Bedford, Achebe and Adichie (who by the way I'm meeting tomorrow... exciting or what?) who have gone before.

Woohoo! I'm on a high....

The Opposite House

"Now it's 4 a.m. and I'm still awake with my fingers splayed over my neck and its old loop
of pain
(and I am at St Catherine's again,
at the window again
amazed again
at the way a steep hill holds growing green on its swerve
when it will support nothing else).

On the wall is St Catherine of Siena, sheets of chestnut hair floating in heaven-driven winds, Catherine who I always fail to love when I remember that she is not the Catherine of spike-wheeled martyrdom. Catherine of Siena looks at me with all of her soul in her soft smile; she looks at me, glad that I will not be staying. I think about the mothers I know or have seen or have heard of. My mother, Amy Eleni's mother, mothers in books, mothers in Chabella's apataki, her stories about the gods. Twenty-four not being old enough, I want to tell my son, Not now, please."

Never having read her before today, I am in awe.

I am often OTT with my expressions of sentiment, and deliberately so. But this time my tongue lies not in cheek.

Get it today.