Chigozie Obioma shades Buhari, talks about his own relationship with books

Chigozie Obioma's sophomore novel "An Orchestra of Minorities" is one of the most anticipated novels of 2019.

An Orchestra of Minorities, which was finally released last week, has created a lot of buzz around the Man Booker Prize shorlistee. So much so that he landed the weekly 'By the Book' interview on the New York Times, and also published an essay on his love for reading with them.

In his interview, he opens up about his life as a reader and his reading rituals when writing. Most of his answers were, of course, interesting but some responses stood out.

He was asked what genres he enjoys reading and which he avoids, to which he responds: "My people say that a poor maid does not reject the embrace of a wealthy prince because of bad breath. I’m hardly turned off by considerations of genre or type. So I have found even manuals — of how to hunt wild birds in West Africa — fascinating. That said, if one returns to a well again and again and finds only bad-tasting water, it is difficult to keep returning there. This is why I tend to avoid works of fiction in which plot isn’t a function of character but the reverse, in which a set of events is orchestrated and characters are thrown in as fillers. I have this sense of the Dan Brown books especially. So I tend to avoid “upmarket crime thrillers.” Although, a few pages in, I’m liking “My Sister, the Serial Killer,” by Oyinkan Braithwaite."

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma [University of nebraska lincoln] University of nebraska lincoln

When asked what his reading rituals are when working on a book or writing, he says: "...What I don’t read while working on a book is any book that remotely resembles what I’m working on. I had to read George Saunders’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” for instance, for a class I was teaching, and halfway through I wished I hadn’t included it in the list because the transient state of spirits and the liminality of some of the characters marginally resembles my new book."

We cant help but mention that this response brings to mind Akwaeke Emezi's semi-autobiographical novel, Freshwater, which was published in February 2018. There are similar elements which he mentioned — liminal spaces, transient state of spirits, etc. From the little we know, the novel is narrated by the protagonist’s chi, his guardian spirit/god in Igbo cosmology. Should we be expecting another metaphysical-themed novel?

On a lighter note, though, when Chigozie Obioma was asked to recommend a book for the American and Nigerian presidents, his reply was:

"I doubt if the United States president is a “yuuuge” fan of fiction, so I’ll not go there. Instead I’ll recommend Barack Obama’s “Dreams of My Father.” Should Trump choose to read it, not only would he develop a deeper appreciation of Obama, he would find himself reading great prose from a great writer (I often joke that Obama became president because Americans were smitten by his prose).

With the Nigerian president, I expect there will be no luck with fiction either. So I’ll recommend Chinua Achebe’s “The Trouble With Nigeria.” First published as a kind of pamphlet, the book is easy to read, and should not be much of a challenge to Buhari, who — as I hear — has been struggling with the English language lately."

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