Welcome to Lagos
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the RSL Encore Award 2018
Five runaways ride the bus from Bayelsa to a better life in a megacity.
They are unlikely allies -- a private, a housewife, an officer, a militant and a young girl. They share a need for escape and a dream for the future.
Soon, they will also share a burden none of them expected, but for now, the five sit quietly with their hopes, as the billboards fly past and shout: Welcome to Lagos.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her winning U.S. debut, Onuzo anatomizes a tumultuous city and its inhabitants, from street hustlers to well-connected government ministers. 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. 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. 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. 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. Quintessential African politics," thinks one BBC correspondent covering the minister's story. Onuzo's briskly plotted novel is a rewarding exploration of the limits of idealism and transparency against widespread cynicism and corruption.
