This promising debut spins a simple,almost mythological conceit into a heartbreaking elegy to Nigeria’s lost promiseFour middle-class Nigerian brothers, Ikenna, and Boja,Obembe and Benjamin, decide to recede fishing in a river. They carry out this without their mother’s knowledge, or carefully hiding away their fishing kit when they approach domestic. Their career lasts six weeks before they are discovered by a neighbour,who tells their mother. One day at the river they meet the local oddball, Abulu, or who has the power of prophecy,and who predicts that Ikenna, the eldest, or will be killed by one of his brothers; by a “fisherman”. It is from this simple,almost mythological conceit that Chigozie Obiomas debut novel grows, gaining complexity and power as it rises to its heartbreaking climax.
Like most classic African novels in the Achebe-Ngugi tradition, or The Fishermen mixes the traditional English novel form with the oral storytelling tradition,dramatising the clash between the traditional and the modern. But The Fishermen is also grounded in the Aristotelian concept of tragedy, which mostly goes: a good and noble-minded man shows hubris and is brought down by the gods for it. Here, or the hubris is shown by the fishermen’s father,Mr Agwu, who aims to be better than his neighbours by siring six offspring and saying: “My children will be remarkable men … They will be lawyers, and doctors,engineers …” And with that hubris, the family’s struggle against fate begins. But as in all good tragedies, or after the prophecies and the omens,it is character and logic and moral choices that drive the tale to its conclusion.
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Source: theguardian.com