In Lagos, Obioma, Ajibade talk Chi, literature

US-based writer and academic, Chigozie Obioma, whose first novel, The Fishermen was nominated for The Man Booker Prize in 2015, recently had a three-city reading tour of his latest book, An Orchestra of Minorities. In Lagos, the veteran journalist, Kunle Ajibade, engaged him at an evening of readings and conversation.

SOME early arrivals were already seated, eagerly awaiting
the commencement of the reading while some others browsed the titles on the
bookshelf. The ‘Inquisitor’, Executive Editor/Director of The NEWS and PM News,
Kunle Ajibade, was also around. He was chatting with publisher and bookseller,
Azafi Ogosi, whose P.A.G.E Book Connoisseurs organised the event for the latest
author on their Parresia publishing label, Chigozie Obioma.

Obioma is an assistant professor of Literature and Creative
Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, State of Nebraska, USA. He was
just only 27 years old when his first novel, The Fishermen was shortlisted for
the Man Booker Prize in 2015. His second novel, An Orchestra of Minorities has
just been published in Nigeria and that evening’s reading and conversation
between the author and Ajibade was part of efforts to promote the book which is
already popular.

By the time the event began some 30 minutes after the
official commencement time of 4.00 p.m., organisers had to get more chairs for
the literati who had converged in numbers on the venue. Fittingly, it was an
exciting conversation with Ajibade adeptly probing and Obioma, who was born in
Akure, Ondo State answering with a maturity and intelligence that belied his
relatively young age.

Ajibade’s first question after the author read an excerpt
from the work which Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, called in later to
commend him for, was how he went about writing it.

“Did you read other books for inspiration before you started
writing; how long did the writing take? What kind of queries did you receive
from your readers, including your editors,” he asked.

Obioma responded: “I’m a control freak. A gem of an idea
comes to me. It could happen at any time; it could just spring up from a casual
discussion with a friend. I grab the idea, and I begin to think about it, so
there’s an incubation period when I try as much as possible not to write
anything down except for some phrases that would eventually be incorporated.
But the actual plot I don’t write down. 
I wait for the idea to incubate in my mind; it could take anywhere from
two weeks to three years. I ‘ll just be thinking about it all the time, and
eventually, I come to a point where the story shapes itself and feels fully
formed.

“I usually would write down the whole plot sequence at a go.
For The Fishermen, for instance, I remember this rainy day in Cyprus when I
began writing the story; maybe like from 2.00 p.m. and didn’t get up from the
seat till 6pm. I poured everything down, but the expansion of the project is
what takes time. But at that time, most of the work had been done internally
during the incubation period. That’s how I write fiction. The same happened
with An Orchestra of Minorities. All the while when I was writing The
Fishermen, I was thinking about this story that would be told by a Chi who is
like 700 years old, and who has been coming and going for so long. It was a
very strange idea even to me, but the more I thought about it, the more it came
together. Putting down the story on paper probably took like two years but
cumulatively, I would say perhaps even five years. I thought about the book for
like two years before I wrote anything down.

“Concerning the question on research, indeed, I have an
author’s note on the second to the last page of the book where I recommend some
materials on the Igbo cosmology and religion. Indeed, I like to say that I’ve
read everything that anybody had written about that, especially the concept of
the Chi. Sadly, the scholarship on that is very minimal. Achebe has an essay,
then there’s a dissertation someone wrote; I’ve forgotten his name. It’s in the
1980s. It’s in-depth research on the Chi, and I also did field research with my
dad; we went to various places in Abia where I’m from. So, I extensively read
because it’s not fantasy. This is bearing fidelity to the actual worldview of
the Igbo people, and I was going to be berated if I got anything wrong.”

“What about your editors, what queries did they raise, and
how did you respond to them, Ajibade further asked the author who studied
English Literature at Cyprus International University (CIU), Northern Cyprus
before taking an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, where
he completed an MFA in creative writing

“I was fortunate to have three editors working on the book,”
Obioma began. “I sold the book to US, UK and Australian publishers
simultaneously. We went about three rounds wherein they would send queries, and
after having read, I would work on certain things. It’s a cosmic book, and my
UK Editor had to read some books to be able to understand some of it. But
there’s the human story. The personal story of the novel is that it’s a doomed
love story between this poor poultry farmer and this student of pharmacology.
His entanglement with her, becomes his undoing. So, that story is one of the
things we mostly worked on, I took care of the cosmological part.”

Published four years apart, Obioma’s The Fishermen and An
Orchestra of Minorities are dark and don’t have happy endings. Why is this so,
Ajibade wondered

The writer who writes for The Guardian of London and New
Statesman among others replied matter-of-factly: “I’m attracted to usually much
more cosmic things, so I’m probing into deeper things. Of course, there are
themes of love, migration, class but the very nexus of the book has to deal
with questions of destiny and fate, so the idea of the Chi being at the centre
of the book and telling the story. The Igbo believe in predestination. When
you’re dealing with things like that, I discovered that you’re actually looking
into the more peripheral parts of human nature. 
And I think that what I often see while I’m going there is usually dark.
That’s the reason. It’s not like I set out to write dark books, that are sad.
It’s just that that’s what happens when you plumb that type of territory.”

On whether being shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize helped
his career, Obioma said: “I didn’t really give a damn about how The Fishermen
would do. I hear a lot of people say that the success of the first book can in
many ways inhibit you writing the second book because, in many ways, you now
have a precursor, so you want to top that in terms of reception. I didn’t have
that much pressure. The only thing I remember feeling was that when I was
nominated for the Booker Prize, I just prayed that I should not win it because
I felt that I shouldn’t win it for the first book. If I achieve this for the
first book, what then do you have coming in the future?  I was tired of all the nominations, and the
awards and I wanted just to get number two. 
In some ways, people were surprised. The other authors were sad, but I
was happy. They were like are you mad or something.”

Asked what kind of nostalgia made him once said that he
would be much happier in the 17th or 18th century Igboland than in the 21st
century, Obioma explained that he has no problems with modernity but “I don’t
really believe in the so-called modernity that has been imposed on us from
foreign ways. That’s not to say that our culture was perfect; there was the
killing of twins and a few other things. That’s why I said I would prefer to be
an Igbo man, unadulterated in the 17th century than now.”

Before the evening ended with a book signing and photograph
session, Obioma also answered questions on the wave of populism and nationalism
in Europe and America as well as if he researched poultry farming that features
in An Orchestra of Minorities.

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