1996, Akura. The father of a large family with six children is transferred to work in another city in the west of the country. Four brothers, aged from 9 to 15 years, rejoice at the opportunity to slip out from under the supervision of their parents and periodically skip school for five weeks, going fishing on the local stinky river.
One day, walking home from the river, the brothers meet a city lunatic who allegedly (or not allegedly) can predict the future: the smelly Abula predicts an early death by the hand of a fisherman to his older brother, Ikenna. From this begins a tragic story on the scale of disasters comparable only to the ancient Greek tragedy of Oedipus...
Obioma is obviously equally familiar with ancient drama and modern literature, and certainly has read Nigerian authors from cover to cover, so it would be good for the reader to also have some idea about all this. Last year, on the Internet, I came across a review in which "Fishermen" was called a secondary novel in relation to the "God of Trifles" by Arundati Roy, "Half of the Yellow Sun" and a couple more texts.
I did not read the unnamed couple, and therefore I did not remember, but about a friend I can definitely say that it was the secondary as such that I did not see: yes, stylistically, sometimes there is a very strong "God of Trifles" and the theme of family destruction is present, well, how to talk about modern Nigeria without touching at all on the topic of the revolution of 1967, which became the key for Adichie, but still very different topics and thoughts come to the fore for Obioma.
It was not by chance that I mentioned Oedipus, it was the myth about him, mixing first with the biblical story of Cain and Abel, and then with local Nigerian Igbo beliefs (however, I am not sure about the sequence of mixing, as well as whether there is this sequence at all), that becomes the basis for the plot of "Fishermen": a person meets fate face to face, but he is too weak and helpless to resist him, and therefore all that remains for him is anger and an attempt to find someone to whom he could be held responsible.
Oedipus the king believed in what was predicted and took responsibility for himself, who became Sophocles for fifteen-year-old Ikenna Obioma forced his heroes to hang targets on those who were nearby, blaming them for what had already happened or was about to happen - the results in both cases were not joyful. What way out of the situation does Obioma offer us?
Apparently, just refuse to believe in prophecies and shape your life and your future on your own, without looking back at oracles, sages and all those who are now calling under their banners, talking about the "bright future" and describing its beauty. In the plot, of course, it works, personal choice, personal responsibility become a substitute for blind and insane rock, but how much this applies to life even in the same Nigeria is a big question.
One of the key advantages of "Fishermen", in addition to the fact that the novel is just interesting to read, is that its author manages to tell the story of Nigeria almost without talking about it. If Adichie and Achebe still described in detail and directly, without twists, what is happening with the country, then there are enough hints and mentions for Obiome: the history of the 1993 elections and the 1996 military dictatorship is presented through the prism of a child's gaze.
Through a story about the material values of boys, about what has changed in the life of tribes with the arrival of white colonists, it is told through a small excursion into the history of the relationship between man and the river flowing on the territory of Akura, which turned from a deity into a kaku-byaka with sewage, that the country is still divided, you can learn through a linguistic portrait of an average resident of the city, who is forced to speak three languages for different occasions (I especially liked the attention to the language, but here you already need to know how Igbo differs from Hausa and Yoruba).
A minimum of dates, names, names of parties, no accusations, labels, and Nigeria, as only a local, and not a geography textbook, can describe it, lies in the palm of your hand.
314.724 SRY