![]() ![]() ![]() Onuzo’s briskly plotted novel is a rewarding exploration of the limits of idealism and transparency against widespread cynicism and corruption. Quintessential African politics,” thinks one BBC correspondent covering the minister’s story. What to do with the minister, and more important, with his money? Onuzo’s representation of Lagos as “a carnivore of a city that swallowed even bones” is often unromantic, but she also criticizes how the city is represented, or misrepresented, by Westerners: “Scandal, murder, intrigue. In her second novel, Welcome to Lagos, young Nigerian writer Chibundu Onuzo returns to some of the themes that drove the twists and turns of her award-winning first novel, The Spider. There they encounter someone desperately trying to leave Lagos: an education minister who has gone into hiding with $10 million meant for Nigeria’s schools. These characters form a family of sorts as they are welcomed to Lagos coolly, obliged to live in a homeless encampment before settling in an unoccupied house. Seeking refuge in the metropolis for various reasons, several Nigerian travelers group up en route to Lagos, including morally upright army deserter Chike swaggering teenage militant Fineboy well-to-do Oma, who is fleeing her abusive husband and a precocious but traumatized girl, Isoken. debut, Onuzo anatomizes a tumultuous city and its inhabitants, from street hustlers to well-connected government ministers. ![]()
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