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A review by nfoutty
Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo
3.0
Originally written for my newsletter The Cardigan Dispatch, tinyurl.com/cardigandispatch
TL;DR: This novel is an interesting and entertaining portrait of Lagos, but is slightly awkward and not terribly profound in its conclusion. Would recommend if you’re specifically looking for novels by African authors about the continent and not diaspora.
Chibundu Onuzo is a Nigerian author who lives in London and writes for BBC and The Guardian. Her second novel, Welcome to Lagos, is both a portrait of a city and a piece questioning the governance of Nigeria. It features a diverse group of characters—two army deserters (one a leader, the other a follower), a formal rebel fighter who wants to work in radio, an orphaned young girl who’s faced extreme violence, a wealthy woman escaping her abusive husband, a struggling but kind-hearted journalist, and a minister of education accused of corruption—forced together by circumstance in the continent’s largest city.
Welcome to Lagos’s strengths lie in its ability to paint a vivid picture of Lagos and to question politics and morality as one. The disgraced minister of education becomes, in turn, a criminal, a grieving husband, an anonymous philanthropist, and an international hero. Onuzo expertly blends the lines between “good” and “evil,” in which no character lands squarely on either side—they all commit crimes, but all stand by each other regardless. The descriptions of Lagos, however, its inequality, its vibrancy, its lack of order, are truly the reason to pick up this novel:
“It was the Lagos delusion. Every morning he watched workers clamber into danfos, pushing, shoving...he envied their energy, the illusion of progress as they kicked and struck out, vigorously treading water. He was too smart and too foolish for Lagos” (81)
Sadly, as the novel continues, we get more plot and character development and far less of the city itself. This results in a strange pace, in which I was begging Onuzo to either slow down or speed up; the Times reviewer called it “frustratingly frenetic.” Some of the plot points defy reasonable belief, but in a way that feels unintentional. The ending, likewise, feels oddly paced, and I was left wanting either 50 pages more or 50 pages less.
Even though there were some awkward, young-novelist-syndrome aspects, I found Welcome to Lagos endearing. The middle section’s chapters opening with clippings from the fictional “Nigerian Journal,” which added a lovely flavor. It was refreshing to read a novel that’s not either a) a philosophical meditation, b) a multigenerational epic, or c) primarily a love story.
TL;DR: This novel is an interesting and entertaining portrait of Lagos, but is slightly awkward and not terribly profound in its conclusion. Would recommend if you’re specifically looking for novels by African authors about the continent and not diaspora.
Chibundu Onuzo is a Nigerian author who lives in London and writes for BBC and The Guardian. Her second novel, Welcome to Lagos, is both a portrait of a city and a piece questioning the governance of Nigeria. It features a diverse group of characters—two army deserters (one a leader, the other a follower), a formal rebel fighter who wants to work in radio, an orphaned young girl who’s faced extreme violence, a wealthy woman escaping her abusive husband, a struggling but kind-hearted journalist, and a minister of education accused of corruption—forced together by circumstance in the continent’s largest city.
Welcome to Lagos’s strengths lie in its ability to paint a vivid picture of Lagos and to question politics and morality as one. The disgraced minister of education becomes, in turn, a criminal, a grieving husband, an anonymous philanthropist, and an international hero. Onuzo expertly blends the lines between “good” and “evil,” in which no character lands squarely on either side—they all commit crimes, but all stand by each other regardless. The descriptions of Lagos, however, its inequality, its vibrancy, its lack of order, are truly the reason to pick up this novel:
“It was the Lagos delusion. Every morning he watched workers clamber into danfos, pushing, shoving...he envied their energy, the illusion of progress as they kicked and struck out, vigorously treading water. He was too smart and too foolish for Lagos” (81)
Sadly, as the novel continues, we get more plot and character development and far less of the city itself. This results in a strange pace, in which I was begging Onuzo to either slow down or speed up; the Times reviewer called it “frustratingly frenetic.” Some of the plot points defy reasonable belief, but in a way that feels unintentional. The ending, likewise, feels oddly paced, and I was left wanting either 50 pages more or 50 pages less.
Even though there were some awkward, young-novelist-syndrome aspects, I found Welcome to Lagos endearing. The middle section’s chapters opening with clippings from the fictional “Nigerian Journal,” which added a lovely flavor. It was refreshing to read a novel that’s not either a) a philosophical meditation, b) a multigenerational epic, or c) primarily a love story.