Diaries of a Dead African
SynopsisPlot
Meme's wife has left him with the bulk of his barn. He has a few tubers to last until harvest. Can he stretch it? Will his friends and relatives help out? Calamatus' break has finally come after an apprenticeship to a con-artist. Can he survive wealth as readily as he did, poverty? Finally Abel's manuscripts are attracting attention, but not, as he discovers, for their literary value... his fondest dreams were on the verge of realisation, yet his father had died at 50 and his brother at 25. How to outlive them both, without fleeing the very opportunities he had craved all his life.
Story
About this book
Diaries of a Dead African by Nigerian writer Chuma Nwokolo follows three protagonists whose lives are shaped by scarcity and sudden opportunity. Meme is a farmer whose wife has left him along with most of his stored harvest. With only a few tubers to last until the next crop, he faces a practical crisis: whether relatives and friends will help, and whether he can stretch what remains.
Calamatus has spent years apprenticed to a con artist and his break has finally arrived. His test reverses Meme's: having survived poverty, he must learn whether he can survive wealth. Abel, a writer, finds his manuscripts drawing attention for reasons unrelated to their literary quality. His father died at fifty and his brother at twenty-five, and Abel weighs the opportunities he has wanted against the risk of not outliving them.
The book presents itself as a merciless comedy, a description that suits its method of placing ordinary people in situations where staying alive turns absurd. The three strands share a concern with debt, obligation, and the thin margin between getting by and losing everything, and each character's danger comes from the same source as his hope.
