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Summary
Summary
A provocative debut novel by a brilliant young Nigerian writer, tackling politics, class, spirituality, and power as a group of friends come of age in Lagos
Growing up in middle-class Lagos, Nigeria during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ihechi forms a band of close friends discovering Lagos together as teenagers with differing opinions of everything from film to football, Fela Kuti to spirituality, sex to politics. They remain close-knit until tragedy unfolds during an anti-government riot.
Exiled from Lagos by his concerned mother, Ihechi moves in with his uncle's family, where he struggles to find himself outside his former circle of friends. Ihechi eventually finds success by leveraging his connection with a notorious prostitution linchpin and political heavyweight, earning favor among the ruling elite.
But just as Ihechi is about to make his final ascent into the elite political class, he reunites with his childhood friends and experiences a crisis of conscience that forces him to question his world, his motives, and whom he should become. Nnamdi Ehirim's debut novel, Prince of Monkeys , is a lyrical, meditative observation of Nigerian life, religion, and politics at the end of the twentieth century.
Author Notes
Nnamdi Ehirim is a twenty-six-year-old Nigerian writer based in Lagos and Madrid. His writing has appeared in Afreada , Brittle Paper , Catapult , The Kalahari Review , and The Republic . He cofounded a clean-energy start-up in Nigeria and is currently pursuing an MBA focused on entrepreneurship in the renewable energy sector.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ehirim's dense and incisive debut throws a harsh spotlight on a diverse group of friends as they come of age in politically corrupt and economically divided Nigeria during the late 20th century. Set in Lagos, Nigeria, and stretching from 1985 to 1998, the story follows the lives of three boys-nicknamed Pastor's son, Mendaus, and Maradona-who are preteen as the novel begins. Their friend, Ihechi, narrates; he's a directionless student who likes playing soccer, watching movies with Mendaus's beautiful older cousin Zeenat, and going to the Afrobeat mecca Afrika Shrine. But when Zeenat is killed during an antigovernment riot in 1992, the tragedy sends ripples through the group, prompting Ihechi's mother to send him to live with his aunt far from the turmoil. Over the next six years, the teenagers mature and adopt leadership positions on different sides of political party lines-a reality that tests their friendship, as well as their belief in their country and faith in themselves. An abrupt end involving an infamous prostitution ring and an immoral general adds an ill-fated, gruesome twist to the otherwise idea-driven narrative. Ehirim writes with a heavy hand, using stilted metaphors and catchphrase parables that sometimes detract from the narrative flow. Still, the novel is a vivid, astute portrait of Nigeria-and its people-in the throes of upheaval. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Nigerian writer Ehirim's audacious debut novel follows a teenager's quest for self-definition in a country in search of itself.In a prologue set in 1992, the narrator, Ihechi, and his friends run into the famed Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti, who proceeds to get the foursomewhich includes Mendaus, a pretentious bookworm; his stepsister, Zeenat, who doubles as Ihechi's love interest; and a young Christian known only as Pastor's sondrunk to the point of threatening a police officer. Ehirim then moves back to 1985 as he retraces the steps leading up to that fateful event, which encapsulates the generational and class intersections propelling the novel. Most of the adults here are fixed in their worldviews. Their children, too young to understand the circumstances that have led their parents to be so rigid, socialize with one another though they come from different backgrounds and differentiate themselves through pop culture. Zeenat communicates through movies, Pastor's son through Scripture, and Mendaus through books. Ihechi, however, is constantly seeking meaning and remains distant due to his banker father's business relationship with the government and his mother's religious fanaticism. These poles gesture toward what Ihechi sees as the underpinnings of Nigerian society: corruption and traditionalism. Fela, a musician who encouraged traditional African lifestyles and religions while being arrested hundreds of times for criticizing the Nigerian government, develops into the perfect centerpiece to represent both the cross-cultural appeal of music and Ihechi's emotional confusion as a child. The next time the foursome sees Fela, a military crackdown leaves Zeenat dead; Mendaus radicalized; and Ihechi's mother fearful for her son's impressionable spirit. She sends him away to live with his uncle and cousins, Pentecostals who look down on himthough it turns out that Ihechi's cousin Tessy is sneaking out at night to work in a brothel. Through her connections, Ihechi winds up working for a major general in Nigeria's army, setting the stage for a confrontation with his childhood friends that forces him to reckon with what both he and his country have become.Told in beautifully evocative prose, a panoramic novel showing that the price of growing beyond one's origins might be steeper than anticipated. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Early on in Ehirim's remarkable debut novel, the narrator, Ilhechi, lays bare the need to share his story: I have an even greater conviction that the past, still and unmoving, reflects our selves in our clearest forms. Indeed, the perceptive reader might be able to tease out a taste of the man Ilhechi will become right from his childhood in Omole, a small town in Nigeria. Ilhechi's early years are mostly ordinary, marked with inertia and an exuberant eagerness to adopt the path of least resistance. Ilhechi's friend, Mendaus, stands out in sharp contrast as a young man filled with idealism garnered from an extensive reading of the classics. But how will these principles hold up when the friends try to make their way in Lagos, where corruption still rules less than 20 years after the end of the Nigerian civil war and power is easily won but fickle? Ilhechi enjoys a brush with authority made through back alleyways and confronts his worst weaknesses as a result. There might be one coincidence too many that weaves the plot together, but Ehirim eloquently succeeds in driving home the steep costs of complacency, which, as Ilhechi learns, can even equal cowardice.--Poornima Apte Copyright 2019 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"PRINCE OF MONKEYS" speaks in constant hyperbolic language; the kind where characters use adages like, "Every problem has its own man of God ascribed to it," and chapters close with phrases such as, "Always pay attention to the secrets in colors that are too terrible to be spoken aloud." And how could they not? Taking place in Nigeria during the 1980s and '90s, Nnamdi Ehirim's first novel shows us a Nigeria that exists in both fantastic and tragic terms. It's a Nigeria in which a group of friends, anchored by the protagonist, Ihechi, can lose almost everything in a single night out, to see their idol, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, perform at the Afrika Shrine. That night is punctuated by a sudden riot that serves the same purpose as others that occur throughout the novel: It is both a funeral and an awakening. In "Prince of Monkeys," though, those become necessary baptisms, offering a diverse cast (Ihechi, a "nonbeliever" named Pastor's son, Mendaus, Maradona, Zeenat), separated by class, religion, education and eventually much, much more, a chance to redefine themselves by those contradictions and inequalities, and by the strife that continuously pocks their homeland. Their preachy vernacular and pop-culture diversions ("Citizen Kane," "The Aristocats," Chaka Khan and Luther Vandross) all become exercises in avoiding vulnerability directly. This dishonesty, inherited from their elders, who also speak in a too-golden tongue, plagues these characters as both children and adults. The group experiences the aftermath of a classist unrest that they were not there to witness. Traversing from Lagos to Enugu, Ihechi encounters firsthand Nigeria's religious extremes, from his mother's Ifa to his Aunt Kosiso's devout Christianity. To Ihechi, the Ifa practice appears grotesque, where the practices of the Pentecostal church are smoothed out to appear proper - despite the bloody history of how it insinuated itself into Nigerian society. But time and again "Prince of Monkeys" reminds us that differences of religion are arbitrary tools given by the white man to Nigerians for sowing deep divides among themselves, divides that are used to justify abandonments: of families, faiths, morals, entire systems. Mistakenly thinking that the scarcity they're sold to believe in represents the only option they have, each character struggles to be born anew, whether that be Maradona of the many identities; Mendaus, who goes from a bookish rascal to a movement leader; or Ihechi's cousins, Tessy and Effy, who slip in and out of clothes just as easily as they do their adherence to their faith. "Prince of Monkeys" is rife with character soliloquies that relay some of the central issues of Nigerian life, then and now. Given the exhausting struggle to get by amid what feels like an uninterrupted cycle of bombings, riots and corruption, you can't blame these characters for relentlessly remaking themselves. Their facades often break not in the most violent moments, but in the quietest, when they're left with nothing but the memories of the choices they have made and those who have been buried. And so at Ihechi's home in Lagos, his father screams mercilessly at the nightly news while his mother feverishly prays to the Ifa gods, and in Enugu, Aunt Kosiso retells of a bloody day that shattered the family's innocence. Because so much goes painfully unspoken between characters, Kosiso is heartbreakingly unaware of how much her nephew relates to what she shares. Yet Ihechi struggles to clarify those connections for himself sometimes; his own maddening motivations, to either restore order to the people or profit from the chaos, place him within forces he's slow to understand as he becomes ensnared in Nigeria's political systems. The protagonist, as a result, doesn't see Nigeria as clearly as Ehirim presents it for us: Nigeria is beset by a commanding, contradictory menagerie of would-be gods of money, power and avarice - the very same afflictions that dig Nigeria's face into the mud and hold it there. When "Prince of Monkeys" finally emerges on the other side of sociopolitical crisis, an early passage comes into sharper focus as media cameras capture a rapturous Mendaus's proclamation to a gathered mass: "We, once heirs of paradise, live by choice as monkeys in a zoo. ... And we, once princes of monkeys, shall die kings among men in paradise." As Ihechi climbs the ranks of society toward financial freedom, he paradoxically finds later in the novel that, as he wrestles with a past he seeks to make peace with, its collisions with his present and future feel as calamitous as the riots. As the novel closes, Ihechi finds himself involved in another moment of upheaval, one that proves he can be transformed yet again. The group experiences the aftermath of a classist unrest they weren't there to witness. TRE JOHNSON writes about race, culture and politics for Rolling Stone and Vox.
Library Journal Review
[DEBUT] The African country of Nigeria is a source of pride and frustration for its many celebrated writers, and debut novelist Ehirim pays homage to both Achebe and Ngozi-Adichie in this harrowing coming-of-age story. Narrated by Ihechi, the tale follows close friends as they navigate their way to adulthood under the lingering scourge of colonialism, the rise of Western-influenced capitalism, and the thumb of military rule. From various religious backgrounds, with Islam, Christianity, and tribal beliefs vying for their attention, Ihechi, Mendaus, Zeenat, and Pastor's Son bond over their shared love of the vibrant art and political scene of Lagos and the charged words and music of their idol Afrobeat star Fela Kuti. But one evening, when violence breaks out at a concert, the group endures a devastating loss, and Ihechi's fearful parents send him to relatives in Enugu, ten hours from his support system. There he meets Madame Messalina, a formidable woman whose power and influence will change the trajectory of Ihechi's life. VERDICT Ehirim employs a polemical style to decry Nigeria's class warfare, government corruption, and rampant unemployment, harnessing the vitality of fiction to elucidate painful truths. Readers who enjoyed Chibundu Onuzo's Welcome to Lagos or Chigoziie Obioma's An Orchestra of Minorities will appreciate the addition of another talented voice to the burgeoning league of Nigerian writers.-Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
