The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Deji Bryce Olukotun's Nigerians in Space.
It's taken me a while to get around to this; I've been curious/interested -- Nigerians in space ! -- but also leery. But what a pleasant surprise -- and, overall, what a surprise, because it turns out to be nothing like what I expected. (Among the nice surprises: lots of abalone -- which, aside from making my mouth water (and breaking my heart a bit), is actually also really well done/utilized (no baloney -- abalone !).)
What really impresses is that this is an 'African' novel that isn't -- like practically everything else brought out by US/UK presses (well, excluding some South African stuff, as well as everything from the whole north African stretch) -- self-consciously and overly-emphatically 'African'. It's comparable to something like Okey Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc. -- but Olukotun hits it on the nose, while Ndibe (pressured by his editor ?) tries way, way too hard.
This was brought out by Unnamed Press -- and good for them -- but it's incomprehensible that this wasn't brought out by a major publisher; it's bigger- (if not mass-)audience appealing, and it's damn good. (The one reason one wishes a major had published it: maybe it would have gotten the attention it deserves -- because it deserves a hell of a lot more than it got.)
It's taken me a while to get around to this; I've been curious/interested -- Nigerians in space ! -- but also leery. But what a pleasant surprise -- and, overall, what a surprise, because it turns out to be nothing like what I expected. (Among the nice surprises: lots of abalone -- which, aside from making my mouth water (and breaking my heart a bit), is actually also really well done/utilized (no baloney -- abalone !).)
What really impresses is that this is an 'African' novel that isn't -- like practically everything else brought out by US/UK presses (well, excluding some South African stuff, as well as everything from the whole north African stretch) -- self-consciously and overly-emphatically 'African'. It's comparable to something like Okey Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc. -- but Olukotun hits it on the nose, while Ndibe (pressured by his editor ?) tries way, way too hard.
This was brought out by Unnamed Press -- and good for them -- but it's incomprehensible that this wasn't brought out by a major publisher; it's bigger- (if not mass-)audience appealing, and it's damn good. (The one reason one wishes a major had published it: maybe it would have gotten the attention it deserves -- because it deserves a hell of a lot more than it got.)