Description
“A vibrant coming-of-age tale which looks back to urban Nigerian classics such as Cyprian Ekwensi’s Lokotown but also forward to an unfolding picture of African identity that is both global and cosmopolitan.”
Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland
“An intense exploration of beauty, friendship, and self-discovery told with compassion. The characters linger with you long after the reading.”
Tendai Huchu, author of The Hairdresser of Harare and The Maestro, The Magistrate, & The Mathemetician
“Timothy Ogene’s stunning debut novel The Day Ends Like Any Day is a post-colonial coming of age story set in contemporary Nigeria. With the history of his vast country as a dramatic backdrop, Ogene weaves the tale of a slum boy smitten with a love for books and jazz, who grows up into a despairing world debilitated by oil wealth, squalor, and corruption. By turns mythic, inspiring, sexy, seedy, and deeply sad, this book will astonish and delight.”
Douglas Glover, author of Elle, and editor of Numero Cinq
“That building reminds me of a house I used to know in Port Harcourt,” Pa Suku was saying, “a house that collapsed during the Civil War, in the same month that Port Harcourt fell. I was too young to know what exactly happened, but I’m sure it wasn’t bombed, neither was it shot at. It just collapsed. It was not the collapse itself that compels me to come here and stare at this crumbling building. You want to know why I come here?”
In the slum they call The Blocks, growing up is a strange affair…
Sam, a young Nigerian whose father only speaks to the children once he has taken on enough alcohol, and whose mother won’t accept that Sam is different from his siblings, is formed by the people he meets, the gay young man he cannot rescue from his tormentors, the girl whose rapist escapes when the women of the block march to mete out justice on him; and Pa Suku, a strange figure who opens Sam’s eyes to books and music, poetry and jazz. Then Sam goes to college and confronts his own sexuality, his own lack of belonging.
The Day Ends Like Any Day is the lyrical, challenging account of the multiple lives of a young Nigerian who refuses to accept that he has been shaped by the traumas of his past.
COMPARABLE TITLES:
The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma; 2015
Born on a Tuesday, by Elnathan John; 2016
Welcome to Lagos, by Chibundo Onuzo 2017
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