In Conversation

This week we spoke to Chigozie Obioma about surmounting rejection, the serendipity of ideas, and how to inhabit the space between the physical and the metaphysical.

Interviewed by Zulaikhah Agoro.

ZA: I would like to start from your origin story. How did you become a writer? What caught your interest about the art and craft of storytelling?

CO: I didn’t think that I wanted to be a writer at first; I fell into writing. Football was my first interest. I grew up in Akure, Western Nigeria in the 1990s when there was a lot of buzz about being a football player. So, naturally, I wanted to be the next Diego Maradona or Abedi Pele. But I encountered some hazards in playing football so that for a period of time I was falling ill and injured. In hospitals, my parents began to tell stories that intrigued me, and I realised at some point that I had fallen into it. It soon became all I cared about, and especially when I found out that stories were published in books. I became a reader and writer.

ZA: I think the best paths are the ones we fall into, if I do say so myself. On to the next phase of your journey, you released your first novel The Fishermen in 2015. As a debut novelist, what was your experience on the journey to publication?

CO: Ah, that feels like such an age ago! As I just hinted at: I began writing at a very young age. I was driven, creating stories out of nearly everything that I came by. I wrote many books, most of them inexperienced stuff that I should have thrown away, but I sent them out. Needless to say that I was pummelled with rejections till the idea for The Fishermen came to me. I began writing the novel while hustling in Cyprus as a foreign student and completed it towards the end of my study there in 2011. With an excerpt of the novel, I got into a Creative Writing program in the US and once I got here, I got an agent. Again, the book was first submitted to publishers in the US who rejected it - every single one of them- for not being suited for a US audience. It is set from beginning to end in a town in Nigeria no one knew about. My agent at the time then sent it to the UK where, after several rejections, it was picked up by a small independent but dedicated press (Pushkin Press) who put their heart and soul into the book and made it possible. The rest, as they say, is history.

ZA: Wow, that is about the roughest start I have heard of so far! I am sure all those publishers are living in deep regret now because once you followed up with your second novel An Orchestra of Minorities in 2019, you quickly made history when both books were consecutively shortlisted for The Booker Prize! How did the solid reception of your earlier work influence your writing process for The Road to the Country. How did the early success impact your career down the line?

CO: I always set out with a vision for a new project, most of the times, while still working on something else. I conceived of the idea for An Orchestra of Minorities, for instance, while still writing The Fishermen. It is often difficult to separate the two books in my head, and this is often the point at which I part ways with the older project. So, I was thinking about The Road to the Country much earlier, but more actively while revising An Orchestra of Minorities. So, because my vision was set, I couldn’t change it under the pressure of how the previous books had done. The struggle was–and always is–how to make sure that I am able to fulfil a large percentage of the vision I set out for myself. That said, one does learn along the way. I learned early on for instance not to pay too much attention to what comes after once the book is out–especially not to read reviews as those are for readers, not the author.

ZA: In an interview with The Republic in 2022, you mentioned that you like to begin your stories with an idea “and let it ferment like making palm wine.” So I’d like you to talk us through the process of creating The Road To The Country. Where did the idea come from, how did it ferment and build, and how did you finally arrive at the ‘sweet’ wine?

CO: It is funny how sometimes one says something and when it is read back to you, it feels like it wasn’t you!

ZA: Haha!

CO: Well, the essence of that quote is true to my creative process. I often glean an idea from some conversation, or observation, or happenstance. The source can be anything, but usually, I stumble into ideas by serendipity. This was the case with The Fishermen, An Orchestra of Minorities, and all of the short stories I have published to date. This is also the case with how the germ of the idea was planted for The Road to the Country, except that I knew from when I was a boy that I would one day write a story about the Biafran War of Independence. A journey to the East of Nigeria where the war took place and where my people are from brought the war into sharp relief for me in 1993 when I found then that there were a lot of people who were disfigured or disabled in some way–an occurrence I hadn’t noticed in the West where I had lived all my life. Upon asking my mother what was the reason for this concentration of deformities, she said simply: “O bu agha”, which means “It was the war.” That curiosity is an ant trail that I have followed to this point. 

So once the idea has come to me, I allow that gestation or fermentation period to happen. I don’t write anything down for days, weeks, months, sometimes years. I let it just cook in my head until I feel the process has been completed and then and only then do I begin writing.

ZA: Perhaps it is fitting to say that this is the story that truly drew you down the unlikely path of writing. Similar to your previous books, The Road to the Country is told through the eyes of a young male character moving through life-changing experiences. Is this an intentional choice? Why is it crucial for these stories to be filtered through the lenses of that period of young male adulthood/adolescence?

CO: I think only The Fishermen has such a filter. The story in The Road to the Country is told through the eyes of an elderly man, Igbala Oludamisi, known as “the seer” in the novel. But the story itself concerns a young man who is just turning twenty at the start of the war in 1967. I have narrated this particular novel this way because of what my central authorial intention is: to reflect upon Kunle’s journey through the war, Igbala’s interest in finding out what happens in the afterlife, and a warning that the past is not only domiciled in the past, it can always happen again. For instance, there are people who believe that war can be a solution to a problem, say the problems of lack of development in Nigeria. This novel, I hope, will give them a sense of what war actually can look like, especially a war fought or experienced by people most of whom are still alive today. Nigeria’s last president, Muhammadu Buhari for instance, was a commander in the war and so were two presidents before him, Olusegun Obasanjo.

ZA: Another theme common to your three books is the role of the mythical sage. In The Fishermen, it is Abulu, the vision-seeing mad man that predicts the violence that later ensues among the four brothers, while in An Orchestra of Minorities we meet Chi, the reincarnated guardian spirit inhabiting the main character’s body. Now in The Road to the Country, we are introduced again to Igbala Oludamisi as you already mentioned, a seer who foresees the birth of the future protagonist. What main ideas do you seek to communicate through these characters? Why do you choose to explore myth and folklore in your stories, as opposed to writing regular literary fiction?

CO: This is a great question. I will answer it in two ways: First, I believe that we all write from a place of varying existential pressures–or, at least, I write from that. This is why I think my interests lie in the liminal; that space between the physical and the metaphysical. The prophetic, which by nature, embodies the unknown and the mysterious, is a veritable creature of that space. It is a space that allows me to create characters and events that are mystical rather than magical without breaking with the real. I call it mystical realism. Consider that there is no magical occurrence in The Fishermen, yet you feel the sense that the novel is walking in that metaphysical space. An Orchestra of Minorities is much the same: the chi exists in another dimension of consciousness, and Chinonso is not privy to it. So, whatever the chi does is in a different realm. We can explain Chinonso’s activities and actions and existence on purely realistic terms. The Road to the Country takes this trope even further. The entire novel takes place in 1947, yet we spend 95% of it during the Biafran War of Independence (1967-1970). 

Second, I think that I am drawn to the ways the Igbo and Yoruba people (two traditions that shaped my understanding of storytelling) told stories in the past. I feel that in the worldview of say the Igbo, a story often has some spiritual import. That is why they feel mythic. I am merely working in this same mode. There is a story, a journey, and an infusion of spirituality.

ZA: I personally find it delightful to see traditional spirituality infused into modern stories. I have two more questions for you. Among other things, you are a professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the host of the annual Oxbelly Writers Retreat. You definitely have a lot of commitments outside writing prize-winning novels, so how do you make time to write in your daily life? What is your routine like?

CO: Haha, this is true - I am engaged in other activities and often ask myself the same question: how does one find time? I think, frankly, by making it. I have sacrificed a lot to write these books. I am not a big social person. So, I keep to myself a lot and try to maintain a strict hedge around time. I think this is how I am able to navigate the hurdles that life naturally throws my way and be productive. But I have no secret. I allow myself to write everytime I can, depending on how much pressure the work is putting on me.Though, the ideal is to be able to write first thing in the morning, when the mind is fresh. But…you see, thoughts often come into your head with a loud voice and can disrupt the creative energy even of that time.  

ZA: Finally, if you could give one piece of advice to aspiring authors, what would it be?

CO: Nurture a mind of your own. I think what will distinguish your writing would be how much you have nourished your mind–let me call it the creative soul. It is that repository of everything you encounter, know, and that happens to you. It is the gallery of impressions and thoughts, of faces you’ve seen, of sounds you’ve heard. If you nurture it well, it will stand outside dogmas and that is what you will need to create the best possible work. And, finally, stay the course. Don’t be swayed by hardships and failures–we all have those. It will get better, as my mom says: E me chia, oga’adinma! 

Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two novels, The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) were shortlisted for The Booker Prize, making him one of only two novelists to be shortlisted for all their works. They have won about a dozen prizes including the FT/Oppenheimer Award for Fiction, an LA Times Book prize, Internationaler Literaturpris, an NAACP Image Award,and have been nominated for many others. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. The Fishermen was adapted into an award-winning stage play by Gbolahan Obisesan that played in the UK and South Africa between 2018-2019. He was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2015. His work have been published in The Guardian, VQR, Paris Review, New York Times, and elsewhere. He is the James E. Ryan Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and divides his time between the US and Nigeria.

You can read an excerpt of his new novel, The Road to the Country here.