Love is Power, Or Something Like That

The Writer 

Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria in 1979. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short fiction has appeared in Kwani?, Guernica, Black Renaissance Noire, and AGNI. He will be part of the World Voices Festival, 2013. 

The Book 

These are vivid, powerful stories of contemporary Nigeria, from a talented young author. When it comes to love, things are not always what they seem. In contemporary Lagos, a young boy may pose as a woman online, and a maid may be suspected of sleeping with her employer and yet still become a young wife’s confidant. Men and women can be objects of fantasy, the subject of beery soliloquies. They can be trophies or status symbols. Or they can be overwhelming in their need. In these wide-ranging stories, A. Igoni Barrett roams the streets with people from all stations of life. A man with acute halitosis navigates the chaos of the Lagos bus system. A minor policeman, full of the authority and corruption of his uniform, beats his wife. A family’s fortunes fall from love and wealth to infidelity and poverty, as poor choices unfurl over three generations. With humor and tenderness, Barrett introduces us to an utterly modern Nigeria, where desire is a means to an end, and love is a power as real as money.

Reviews

“Brilliant, unforgettable, violent, compassionate. The range of people Barrett makes us care about takes the breath away: wife-beaters, rapists, drop-drunk mothers, yearning evangelicals, coddled international businessmen, depressed policemen wielding cow-legs against the innocent. Whole lives contain less relentless, exquisite detail than this.”—Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution

“Here is a singular voice in African writing: urbane, unapologetic, as harsh as the truth, as tender as love, an old subject that A. Igoni Barrett refreshes by beaming the precise and searing light of his language into the darkest corners of its territory. A masterful accomplishment.”—Doreen Baingana, author of Tropical Fish

“A. Igoni Barrett has a big heart. His portrait of modern-day Nigeria, like the country itself, is a bewitching juxtaposition of the grotesque and uplifting, rotten and humane. He makes us wince in sympathy for his characters, struggling to give their lives meaning in the toughest of cities, even while—in many of these stories—we fervently hope never to cross paths with them.”—Michela Wrong, author of It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower

"Love, life, revenge, survival, and compassion all figure into this bighearted, daring collection of stores from a gifted Nigerian writer. . . . Barrett shares as much with Raymond Carver or Amy Hempel as Chinua Achebe. . . . Electrifying tales of vibrant urban nights and acrid, desperate days."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"While most of the nine stories in [Love is Power, or Something Like That] have Nigeria as their backdrop, the emotional turbulence they capture should strike any reader as universal."—Publishers Weekly