The "Fine Boys Reading" in PH

Fine Boys by Eghosa Imasuen has been described as “a coming of age story” that many readers can easily relate to. For the younger generation, the story isn’t far-fetched and for the original “wounded generation” it brings back feelings of nostalgia. 

Medical doctor, Eghosa Imasuen was guest author at the Rainbow Book Club reading which held on Sunday, 25 February at Le Meridien Hotel, Port Harcourt.  Eghosa writes skilfully employing pidgin English to render a gripping account. Every new page promises more adventurous escapades from his characters. The story points to the decadence of our government, our failed university structures, and the menace of increasing violence associated with confraternities on campus. The story is set at a time when Nigeria was  under the weight of the annulled June 12 elections, even as the execution of human rights activist, Ken Saro Wiwa and his men caused an uproar from the international community. The book aptly captures the scenario: “There was the junta and the gap toothed Maradonna, trying to keep the peace on campus, with the presence of the military when in fact the country was in turmoil”.

Ewaen and his oyinbo friend, Wilhelm, get into the university a year later than usual due to the incessant staff union strikes. They get acquainted with Tuoyo, Ejiro, Odegua, KO, Tambo, in room A109 and share the pressure to blend into one of the campus confraternities as “fine boys.” The author sums up the Nigerian university, “This was not a university. It is a jungle. We were all jungle rats huddled around a candle, watching it flicker and burn out slowly.” 

At the Rainbow Book Club reading, Dr Imasuen read an excerpt about first loves from his book. In response to a question on why he had to kill one of the characters at the end of the novel, Eghosa explained that we tend to shield ourselves from tragedy but life is full of them and sometimes they are the drastic consequences of trivial decisions we make. 

Attendees at the reading commended the book and suggested that it be made compulsory reading for all university undergraduates because of the embedded lessons for social development of youths. Imasuen informed the audience that the University of Benin already adopted the book for their Department of English and Contemporary Studies. The publisher, Farafina, is also working on an abridged version to make the book suitable for younger readers. 

Imasuen shared three techniques writers employ in their craft: experience, research and imagination. He urged aspiring writers to read widely, study and listen to people. 

The book reading ended with an autograph session and photographs with the author. There was an announcement that the Rainbow Book Club’s March reading will be a celebration of poetry to mark the World Poetry Day on 21 March.                                                                 

---report  sent in by Ibiye Alalibo

Favourite Five: Eghosa Imasuen

Eghosa Imasuen, author of To Saint Patrick and Fine Boys is not new to the GCLF. We asked him to send us a short piece on his favourite five books; he had this to say. "Okay, I get this call from my friends at The Voice. Eghosa, we want you to write a little thing about the best five books you've read. Of all time? I ask. Yes, they say. Hard task, I say. They know. I can do it. So here goes. I have gone down the path of picking books which had a profound impact on me, on my world view, on my education. Some of these provoked me to ask more questions, and they entertained me immensely. Something I believe all fiction must do. I have arranged these entries more or less haphazardly; if there is any pattern, it is in the impact they had on my writing."

The Haj by Leon Uris

I read this book in university. It was my first Leon Uris book, and I was initially afraid of its volume, wondering how small me could finish what looked like a thousand-page epic. But Uris’ talents lie in moving the reader so quickly along his immensely enjoyable plots, while he also gives them a history lesson. The Haj follows the Palestinian tragedy. It goes back and forth, following a Palestinian Arab family, giving us a glimpse into their traditions. It wears the author’s opinions boldly, laying the blame for the current conflict at the feet of the British and the surrounding Arab states.

The Haj made me to read. It made me form an opinion based on the information as I could gather; it made me look with suspicion at the eschatologically-driven fatalism that drives much of the opinions of Nigerian evangelicals. It made me understand that villainy resides everywhere, side by side with heroism and love and beauty.

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

Being a novelist, I felt odd putting a work of non-fiction on this list. But it is with a nod to the power of Preston’s prose that it has to be mentioned here. I read this book while working as a doctor in Warri. It conflated all the knowledge the world had at that point in time into a compact, eminently readable, non-fiction thriller.

The Hot Zone follows the outbreak at a US Army base of an exotic viral infection. This haemorrhagic fever outbreak allows the writer to take a journey into Equatorial Africa, the ancestral home of humanity, and of some of humanity’s oldest enemies. It explains the unintended consequences of modernity’s inexorable advance into the places of our origins. It is one of the best, most readable ripostes to the nonsense of alternative AIDS origin theory.

Fatherland by Robert Harris

I first heard of this novel after I watched the trailer of the movie adaptation. I still haven’t seen the movie, but I have since read the book. It is alternate history. It is genre fiction told so well, and by a first-time novelist, former journalist Robert Harris.

Its central premise is that the Nazi’s won World War Two. Its point of divergence is never pinpointed, but it would seem that Reinhard Heydrich’s survival of the 1942 assassination by British-trained Czech agents in Prague would have had major consequences had it happened. It is the 1960s in this alternate timeline. The USA and The Reich are negotiating détente. Secrets risk messing up everything. It is alternate history, and there is only so much I can mention in this little essay without spoiling a good thriller for you, dear reader. Suffice it to say that the world in which a Nazi superpower exists would be a strange place indeed. My first novel, To Saint Patrick, owes this work of art a debt of gratitude.

American Gods (The Tenth Anniversary Edition) by Neil Gaiman

Imagine reading a novel and listening to it at the same time. I'd heard of this book for a while. But it was after I heard that a special tenth anniversary edition had been published, with more than 12,000 words from the original manuscript restored, that I decided to look for it and read. I purchased the kindle edition and started reading. It is a massive book, and threatened to interfere with work. So I purchased the audio book too. And I listened to the book to and from work, and read from where I stopped in bed or at the dinner table. I am still in love with this book.

It is fantasy, science fiction, horror, travel fiction. It is everything and nothing. It asks, what if all the gods, and fairies, and monsters dreamed up by man in the lost places of the world, what if all these were alive, brought into being and are sustained by and thrive on our belief? What if we stopped believing? I cannot recommend Neil Gaiman enough. And this is his magnum opus.

Everything Good Will Come and Purple Hibiscus–  Sefi Atta and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I am going to cheat here. I am going to treat these books as one. I bought them on the same day in 2005, and read them back to back. They were both published by who would become my publisher, the Farafina imprint of Kachifo Ltd.

I had already started work on my first novel. I travelled to Lagos to shop for books, to see what the competition was writing when I bought these novels. They opened my eyes. Atta’s EGWC was a decade removed from my experience, but I found in its pages memories of uncles in my parents’ Boys Quarters, listening to Bob Marley, and of my aunties and older cousins, with perms, and shoulder-padded impossible square-cut blouses and high-waist stone wash mom-jeans. I saw the tragedy begin, the tragedy that would soon become mine.

This was where Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus began. The story had become ours. The breadwinners who became villains in their own homes. The rise and rise of inept political leadership, the lowering and lowering of standards till it’s now underground, so deep, it competes with our crude oil deposits for living space.

Both these books told me that my generation’s story had begun to be told. These novels confirmed to me that I had to keep on writing.

Book Launch of Eghosa Imasuen’s Fine Boys

Details here.

FINE BOYS, the New Novel by Eghosa Imasuen

Eghosa Imasuen, author of To Saint Patrick and Fine Boys

Eghosa Imasuen was born in Nigeria in 1976, and grew up in Warri. His first novel, To Saint Patrick, an Alternate History murder mystery about Nigeria’s civil war, was published by Farafina in 2008. His second novel, Fine Boys, is, in the words of Binyavanga Wainaina, ". . . the first African novel I know that takes us deep into the world of the children of IMF: those post-Berlin wall Africans, like myself, who came of age in the days of The Conditionalities, those imposed tools and policies that made our countries feral; the days that turned good people into beasts, the days that witnessed the great implosion and scattering of the middle classes of a whole continent. Fine Boys takes us deep into the lives of the notorious gangs that took over universities all over Nigeria in the 1990s and early this century. We saw our universities collapse, and we struggled to educate ourselves through very harsh times. It is a beautifully written novel, heartfelt, deeply knowledgeable, funny, a love story, a tragedy; an important book, a book of our times; a book for all Africans everywhere."

Buy the Kindle edition of Fine Boys here. Read reviews of the novel here and here. Read interviews with the author here and here.  Fine Boys is available in bookstores across Nigeria. For inquiries about the book, visit here. Published below is an excerpt from Chapter 17 of the novel. Read another excerpt here.

Excerpt from Chapter 17 of Eghosa Imasuen's Fine Boys

June 12 came and went. Very quietly. The World Cup distracted the rest of the civilized world while the Americans, who hosted the competition, changed their TV channels en masse to catch OJ Simpson trying to outrun the police at 40km/h. We kept busy watching football, not paying attention to the pressing issues that our country faced. Ken Saro Wiwa had just been arrested. 

Who heard? Who cared?

In Nigeria’s first match on the world stage we trashed the Bulgarians three-nil. Wonderful day it was. No one, not even those who maintained a fashionable aloofness when it came to football, could resist the euphoria. Banners of green-white-green, made with bed sheets or cheap plastic, flapped from the doors, boots, and bonnets of cars. We spent the evenings, as we waited for the matches to air, playing faux-match-ups between that night’s teams on our video game consoles or on the small pitch in the middle of Estate. It was the first World Cup I would actually watch.

The bloody Americans were six hours behind us and this made the match times particularly horrendous. Bleary-eyed from an evening of drinking we would stay awake until two in the morning for an 8PM match, east-coast time. Thank God, the Nigerian team was based in Boston. Eastern Time was easier to anticipate.

The armoured personnel carriers still stood at the junctions in school. The student leaders still ranted and raved. Nobody paid much attention. Democracy was having a hard time competing with football.

The days before Nigeria played Italy were fun. There was this real sense of yes-we’ve-arrived in the air. We had been telling them abroad that we were the funkiest, coolest Africans and it was true. Did you see Finidi and his doggy-style celebration in the Greece match? Or Amokachi and his funky groove, matched only by his funkier goal?

Tambo came back. He had been thrown out of Bulgaria and we added a short-lived suffix to his already long moniker. He was now Clement ‘Oliver-Tambo’ Unegbu of Sofia, Bulgaria. Considering the fact that he had spent his time there in and out of sleeping bags, he looked quite good. He smelled of jand; that supermarket/new/hotel-room smell that Johnny-just-comes had. And Tambo milked this for every kobo it was worth. At the late night drinking sessions before watching matches in which the Nigerians impressed and the Cameroonians embarrassed themselves, Tambo would be seen with two girls on either arm, his pockmarked face grinning ear to ear as he told them how clean Sofia was; how lovely the streets were. Streets that he had only glimpsed from behind wire mesh fences. But he was allowed to get away with it. After all, Nigeria was in the World cup. Everything was forgiven, wasn’t it?

I ran into Tommy just before Nigeria versus Argentina. NEPA had taken light and we had gone to Jowitz to watch the match at around two that morning. As Maradona and his compatriots stretched the limits of fair play at the expense of our countrymen, Tommy came up to me and asked how I was doing. I said fine. Then, just as Siasia scored, he said he wanted to talk to me about something. During the half-time break, we strolled outside.

“Your father owns a Bureau de Change?”

Well, in the past, he had proven that he did not waste time. “Hmm,” I replied. I knew where he was going.

“I get this guy. Very cool chap. But his father is such an arsehole. I was wondering if you could do him a favour. For me. You see the guy papa has this bag of hundred pound sterling notes that the boy can have access to . . .” He paused when he saw the smile on my face, one of disgust, of sadness.

“Tommy stop. Why do you do this to me? I have always respected you, haven’t I?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tommy, there is nothing like a one hundred pound note. And even if there was, I wouldn’t switch anything with the real stuff in my father’s office. Just take am say I no fit.”

“You never even hear wetin I wan’ talk.”

“I no go ever fit, Tommy.”

He walked silently away, murmuring something about my not appreciating everything that his friendship could do for me. I thought nothing more of it and went back to watch Nigeria lose to two quick goals from the Argentines.

We still qualified for the second stage though. And everywhere in school the tension was palpable. We were going to play the Italians. Dirty sons-of-bitches who thought nothing of the odd dive here, the dirty tackle there; we knew that at the end of everything, like that British commentator said in the ’82 World Cup, “Skill will always prevail.”

At times, my mind went to the country itself. Nothing was happening. No strikes, no student riots, nothing. Ejiro had come back to school after less than a week at home, complaining of the boredom. They said that the winner of last year’s election had been abandoned by his friends. His running mate was serving in the junta as the Foreign Affairs minister. Governors, recently stripped of their offices, and from both political parties, were busy hustling for contracts outside the offices of the Military Administrators of the states. One little heard and even less listened-to rumour said that MKO was back from exile and that he was going to declare himself President of the Republic the day before Nigeria played Italy. Talk about poor timing.

Nigeria played Italy and we lost. Nobody knew that MKO had been arrested and thrown into detention a day before. That morning the rumours began filtering in. Not about MKO, no. They said that seven - I remember the number - Italians were drug cheats. Italy had been disqualified; Nigeria was going to meet Spain in the quarterfinals.

Yes! Good news!

But it was a fib. The euphoria disappeared quickly. We passed the Student Union leaders shouting from podiums at the school junctions beside the Military vans and finally stopped to listen.

What! They arrested MKO? For what?

I dodged the demonstrations when they began. They lasted for two days and the only hint we had of them in our flat was the smell of tear-gas filtering in through the windows. At night, when the students had been chaperoned back to the hostels and the town was quiet, my flatmates and I strolled to Estate, to Harry’s room, and listened to gist about the wahala.

“O boy, if you’d seen what Soalim did. That guy is a mad man,” Ejiro said. Soalim was a lunatic who passed for normal because he was so articulate and was always impeccably dressed. He went to FGC Owerri and was currently a Year Two Law student.

“What did he do?”

“If I did not see it, I would have thought it was a lie,” Ejiro answered. “I’m telling you when the tear gas canister landed right beside us, I thought I was dead. If you hear the odour. But Soalim, with a kerchief over his nose, just picked it up, danced around in front of the shocked policemen and threw it back. If you see how the policemen pick race helter-skelter. It was so funny.”

But it had been hopeless. The nice officers were replaced by korofos from the army barracks and these fired shots in the air. The students remembered that they had mothers waiting at home praying for their safe return, and ran. The moms’ prayers were answered. No one was hurt.

[The author retains copyright to this excerpt. Do not reproduce without permission.]

Eghosa Imasuen @ TEDxIfe

Eghosa Imasuen, author of To Saint Patrick and the newly released Fine Boys, delivered this talk at the inaugural TEDxIfe. (Imasuen was a guest writer at GCLF 2009 and GCLF 2011.)