After making herself known by publishing a deliciously sentimental and successful first novel, the Nigerian Ayobami Adebayo delivers with In the time of the damned and the blessed his second novel, very political. Against a backdrop of corruption, electoral violence and class struggle in contemporary Nigeria, this new opus, from the pen of one of Nigeria’s promising authors, recounts the turbulent entry into adult life of two young people with diametrically opposed destinies. But life will arrange for them to meet. Interview.
How did you get into writing, Ayobami Adebayo ?
I have been writing since I was a teenager. At university, I had a professor who really encouraged me to write. As this professor was never stingy with his time, I submitted my writings to him. He particularly highlighted stereotypical expressions and advised me to look for original formulas and innovative turns of phrase. I was studying English. This experience of quasi-immersion in English-speaking literature from all over the world was also very educational for me. I understood that it was not enough to know how to tell a story, but how to tell it was equally, if not more, important.
It seems that your mother, who was an academic, told you “ since you want to become a writer, you need to read the books in the Heinemann African Writers’ Series “. Have you read all 350 titles in the collection ?
No, of course I didn’t read every title, but I read every novel that was in my mother’s university library. As a teacher, she was allowed to borrow them and she passed them on to me. This is how I discovered the great classics of African literature. These novels meant a lot to me. First of all, because they made my aspiration to become a writer plausible. I thought there was an audience for stories about Nigeria, told from a Nigerian perspective. I believe that it was after reading the titles of this series that I really began to think about the themes around which I built my novels, themes drawn from contemporary Nigeria.
What does this second novel say? ?
It’s the story of two families. Through their parallel stories, I try to tell the story of the city where they live, contemporary Nigerian society where class struggle is in full swing. I wanted to explore the consequences of social inequalities on the lives of the protagonists of my novel, and on their families too. The two families whose evolution the novel traces constitute the prism through which I try to show the state of the Nigerian nation. Added to these considerations is a story of love and mourning.
It is also a question here of corruption, of male-female relations in Nigeria today, of ethnic and social violence. It’s a very political novel, no ?
You know, I’ve been thinking about this novel for a very long time. Its real theme is, in my opinion, social promotion. Through the experiences of my characters, I tried to understand if today, in Nigeria, the social elevator works, especially for men and women who grew up in poverty. I was also keen to tell how the country’s unchanging socio-political structure perpetuates the class hierarchy. The case of Eniola, from a downclassed family, illustrates well, it seems to me, how political choices impact citizens. What interested me in particular was showing the thousand and one consequences of corruption on the lives of the characters.
Each of the four parts of your book is named after the title of one of the recent Nigerian novels, written by some of the authors of your generation. You seem to want to constitute an intertextual network of universes and imaginations ?
Yes, absolutely. By referring through the titles to books by contemporary authors, I wanted the reader to be able to approach my novel with these other imaginations in mind. I was inspired by the visions of my contemporaries because they seem to say something fundamental about Nigeria as a country, about what it means to be Nigerian today. Let us add that I conceived this novel as a sort of homage to the very experience of reading literary works, reading as an opening to the world. A Spell of Good Things is a reflection on Nigeria, but far from being an isolated reflection, it unfolds in the continuity of the literary works of its time.
In the time of the damned and the blessed (A Spell of Good Things), by Ayobami Adebayo, translated from English by Virginie Buhl, Charleston, 512 p., €22.90, digital €13.