Book review: An Orchestra of Minorities, by Chigozie Obioma

Chigozie Obioma's book The Fisherman was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize PIC: NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images)

Gore Vidal used to deplore novels by American academics which were, he said, written to be taught rather than read. Now that every second novelist seems to be a professor, or assistant professor, of literature and creative writing, it's no surprise that there are many more of these books, endlessly discussible, 'multi-layered,' fantastic, clever, loaded with references to other, often classic, works, self-indulgent, verbose and far too long. Chigozie Obioma's second novel is such a novel, one that will be manna, or meat and drink, to the professors, all the more so because it comes with charts of Igbo cosmology and the narrator is the 'Chi' or 'Guardian Spirit' of the hero. It begins with a 'First Incantation' to 'Chukwu, creator of all things.' There are subsequent incantations and many reflections on the role and powers of the 'Chi' throughout the novel, and one finds oneself echoing Miss Brodie and reflecting that for those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing which they will like; like a lot indeed, one should add. For those who don't, one can recommend only what Scott called 'the laudable practice of skipping.'

Skipping is better – if you don’t like this sort of thing – than throwing the book impatiently away, for buried within the extravagance, there is a good, straightforward, very human, often moving and sometimes comic novel with a strong and simple plot. One should say that the publishers who, understandably, on the strength of Obiamo’s highly praised first novel The Fishermen, expect great things and rich rewards from its successor, seem happy to play down the extravagance of the superstructure. Their press release very sensibly pays no almost no attention to it, and offers only a brisk outline of the narrative.

The hero Chinonso is a chicken farmer, a good, rather simple young man. Returning from market he happens on a young woman who seems about to throw herself off a high bridge. He dissuades her and so saves her life. Of course he will fall in love with her, and she will respond. But he is poor and her family rich. She is educated – training to be a pharmacist while he left school early. Her family disapprove of him. To win her he must change his life, get an education. A friend, Jamike, who will turn out to be a false friend – “a yahoo boy” – persuades him to apply for a course in business administration at a university in Turkish Cyprus. Chinonso sells his poultry and his compound and hands the money to Jamike who will make all the arrangements. But of course when he gets to Cyprus he finds he has been cheated and ripped off. His experiences there are frightful. When, years later, he makes his way home, the question is whether he can recover what he has lost, find his fiancée again and start anew. All this is very convincingly and movingly done. There’s no authorial showing-off, no cleverness, just an acute, tender, painful and sometimes darkly funny story. The publishers claim that the novel “is also a contemporary twist of Homer’s Odyssey.” I don’t see it and there’s no need for such a comparison, though I daresay it will make for hours of classroom discussion. What we have is a very human story about love, aspiration, betrayal, greed, dishonesty and the tribulations that the innocent and trusting may suffer. It’s good fiction and like all good fiction it rings true.

Obioma is very evidently a writer of real talent. I’ve no doubt that this novel will appeal to many and that it will be a great success. It will surely win prizes and there will be chatter about its mythic qualities. Obioma is himself an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I hope that this novel will make him so much money that he can get out of the classroom, and write novels which will delight ordinary readers more than teachers of literature. Then he can concentrate on what he does so well, and cut out a lot of flowery stuff like this: “The cosmic spider of Eluigwe spins its lush web over the moon for the thirteenth time.”

An Orchestra of Minorities, by Chigozie Obioma, Little, Brown, 528pp, £14.99