A conversation with Onyeka
Radhika Seth
New Delhi, India
Saturday, July 15, 2006
"Mystery-historical-religious-literary
fiction" is the way, Onyeka Nwelue, an 18 year-old Nigerian writer, describes
his forthcoming novel, The Abyssinian Boy and about his collection
of poems, I Will Die When I Want, which would be released this
fall in Lagos, he says: "Honestly, I am not a poet, but I have tried to venture
into prose poetry, at least become the first in Nigeria, if at all there is
none."
There was a time when few voices were heard from the Nigerian literary scene, but due to the emergence of Chinua Achebe with Things Fall Apart, everything changed for the Nigerian writer, that now there are many of them like Chimamanda Adichie (Purple Hibiscus), Sefi Atta (Everything Good Will Come), Chris Abani (Graceland), Uzodinma Iweala (Beasts of No Nation) Helen Oyeyemi (The Icarus Girl), etc.
Born in Imo State in the eastern part of Nigeria, on the 31 January, 1988, Mr. Nwelue was described in 2004 by The Guardian (Lagos) as a "teenager with steaming pen" and his work has being published widely, appearing in The Guardian, The Sun, New Age, Daily Times, Libits Journal (Canada), Universal Journal (US), AfroToronto, Eclectica Online, Kwenu, Wild Goose Poetry Review (US) and many more. The young relative of Nigeria’s female novelist, Professor Flora Nwapa, who was recently in India for the International Writers Festival, 2006, reveals to us that his story is set "in Nigeria and India, running from a little bit part of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries," a thing that is rare in world literature. Although, he claims that the narrator of his story "will only take you to these centuries."
When asked why he chose to be a writer, he had this to say: "Art has always been a part of me. I was born and bred in a remote village, where people value art, so I have chosen not to disappoint them and myself. Books have been my bed-sharers. There is really nothing else to do because I know that if I ever try my hands on another thing, I would break my heart. My siblings call me a booksexual, so I think there is nothing else to do, other than to sleep and make love with books.’ Slim, tall, slightly bespectacled and almost as handsome as Denzel Washington, Mr. Nwelue’s afro speaks for him: "If I walk past people, any girl who doesn’t look at me is probably a lesbian." He breaks into a hysterical laughter, moreover he doesn’t "see myself as a handsome; I try to look handsome when I can because my mom has always said to me, ‘You are a handsome child'." But that is what every mother would say to her child.
Born to a politician-father and a schoolteacher-mother, Mr. Nwelue’s book is "something that has happened to me in dreams and in real life, but to make it more and a little bit easygoing, I had to write seriously with innocence." But being born into a Christian family and by a "Christian fanatical mother," Nwelue says that "as long as all religions are fabrications, he will walk away from them and firmly put his trust in God, which is the most essential thing."
Incredibly, the young author doesn’t have a favourite author. "Its of no use," he says. "You might trundle on another book tomorrow and you say, 'This is my favourite,' so it would be better not to degrade anyone." But to him, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things stands out, including Gurcharan Das’s A Fine Family, which he describes as "funny," Salman Rushdie’s Shame, Midnight’s Children, and The Moor’s Last Sigh, Chetan Bhagat’s One Night @ the Call Center and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. And that is "when it comes to Indian literature," but then, he adores Wole Soyinka (The Interpreters, The Lion and the Jewel, Kongi’s Harvest, Brother Jero) the most, followed by Chinua Achebe (Arrow of God), Femi Osofisan (Once Upon Four Robbers), Flora Nwapa (Idu and Efuru), Akin Adesokan (Roots in the Sky), Chimamanda Adichie (Purple Hibiscus), Odia Ofeimun (The Poet Lied), Gabriel Okara (The Voice), Jude Dibia (Walking with Shadows), which he claims is the "unbeatable," Sefi Atta (Everything Good Will Come), Tolu Ogunlesi (Listen to the Geckos Singing from a Balcony), Akeem Lasisi (Iremoje: A Ritual Poetry in Honour of Ken Saro-Wiwa) and "thousands of them in the Nigerian literary scene."
For what Mr. Nwelue wants to become in future, "lies in the precious hands of God because I want to be a strong writer and a politician, in order to change the phase of Nigerian politics." The 2000 winner of the THOMSON Short Story Prize recently passed out of high school and intends to pursue a course in "English Literature at the University of Manchester, England, where I have already been offered a place."
His interests lie in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, communism, racism, sexism, fascism and "so many isms for isms." He ends his conversation with a boisterous laughter, which makes you wonder what his narrator, whom he says is 17 years old [that’s a little bit younger than him] would be like.
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Radhika Seth writes for The Times of India.