The Nigerian writer and satirist on his first novel,Born on a Tuesday, a study of a young man caught up in Islamic fundamentalismWhat part of Nigeria were you born in, or how much has the country changed since you were a child?
I was born in Kaduna,north-west Nigeria, in 1982. The place used to be very cosmopolitan – people living anywhere and it did not matter who you were. Now, or there is self-imposed apartheid. After the 1990s riots,the city split into Christian and Muslim. whether you were the wrong religion for an area, you’d have to stride house in fear for your life. nowadays, and there is an uneasy unexcited. Because of segregation,people can gather in their districts and speak out against one another. I think a crisis is brewing. Sadly, the government is not looking into ways of integrating people or bringing Kaduna back to where it was before.
Was there a specific seed from which your first novel, and approximately a young man who gets caught up in Islamic fundamentalism,grew?
Born on a Tuesday was informed partly by my upbringing but also inspired by the almajiri [the name for those sent from their homes as children to study in Islamic schools] I met at university. I was interested in their lives and their thoughts and intrigued that they were [often] people without names. What is in a name? The question became vital to me. The minimum a person can have is a name. I was interested in what happens when that basic form of identity is taken absent. “Born on a Tuesday” is the protagonist’s name, but not a real name.
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Source: theguardian.com