The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma: a Review
The Fishermen starts off really good albeit slow. Obioma’s style is that of a master of literary fiction and employs allegory to a large extent. One gets the feeling that the story transcends what is being read and this is evident in Obioma’s exploration of certain concepts, berthing major political and social commentaries. It’s no wonder it was a shortlist for the Man Booker Prize what I choose to call the Grammy of Literary awards. This review won’t include any spoilers, you’ll have to go find the book and read it yourself. But I promise you, you’ll be holding on to the edges of your seats or beds as the case may be till you have read the last page.
I’ll start off with this poem by Mazi Kunene on the epigraph of the book as it serves as a reference point to what is about to come within its pages.
The madman has entered our house with violence
Defiling our sacred grounds
Claiming the single truth of the universe
Bending down our high priests with iron
Ah! yes the children,
Who walked on our Forefathers’ graves
Shall be stricken with madness.
They shall grow the fangs of the lizard
They shall devour each other before our eyes
And by ancient command
It is forbidden to stop them!
The Fishermen is the story of four brothers and their childhood shenanigans in the small town of Akure in southwest Nigeria. When their strict father was transferred to work in a town far away from home, the brothers take their father’s absence as an opportunity to commence mischief by going fishing, neglecting their school work or even skipping school entirely. The story is told from the point of view of Benjamin or Ben, a nine year old and the youngest of the four brothers. The Omi-Ala the river where the boys fish is a forbidden river located near their home where the brothers usually sneak out without their mother’s knowledge.
The Omi-Ala River is notorious for being a harbinger of filth and tragedies.
The boys however decide to ignore their parents caution about going within the vicinity of the river’s location. Then one day on one of their subsequent visits to the river they meet a dangerous local madman, Abulu. Abulu the madman is a sort of prophet of doom. Everything he prophesies comes to pass. Ikenna the oldest of the brothers is told by Abulu that he is destined to be killed by a fisherman which essentially could be one of his siblings. And that is the catalyst of the book.
The prophecy, like an angered beast, had gone berserk and was destroying his mind with the ferocity of madness . . . until all that he knew, all that was him, all that had become him was left in disarray. To my brother, Ikenna, the fear of death as prophesied by Abulu had become palpable, a caged world within which he was irretrievably trapped, and beyond which nothing else existed.”
The events that unfold after this prophesy are mythic and tragic. There’s a lot to unpack and take in as Ben’s mind is thrown into a state and the reader is forced to go through this visceral journey with him to the point of blowing little bits of the mind away.
“The things my brother read shaped him; they became his visions. He believed in them. I have now come to know that what one believes often becomes permanent, and what becomes permanent can be indestructible”
The Fisherman is basically a family tale – albeit a tragic one, thus with a universal appeal to any reader. The family dynamics of the Agwu family is one all too familiar in many African homes- where the father is absent and the mother is almost entirely left alone to fend for the children.
“Mother was a falconer. The one who stood on the hills and watched, trying to stave off whatever ill she perceived was coming to her children. She owned copies of our minds in the pockets of her own mind and so could easily sniff troubles early in their forming, the same way sailors discern the forming foetus of a coming storm.”
Obioma utilises allegory as a literary tool to compare the Agwu family to Nigeria as a country destined to fail. Just like a mother is left to cater to six children among them four energetic young boys, likewise Nigeria was set up to fail from the onset of its independence by the British through the amalgamation of various unrelated tribes thrown into a space and told to survive.
For a debut novelist, Chigozie Obioma’s voice is original yet masters the art of storytelling of the likes of Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah and the rest of the canons of African Literature. It is also scattered with some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read. Such as this:
“As I watched the men throw more earth into the grave, I dug into the cold soil of my own mind, and it became suddenly clear—the way things always become clearer only after they have happened—that Ikenna was a fragile delicate bird; he was a sparrow. Little things could unbridle his soul. Wistful thoughts often combed his melancholic spirit in search of craters to be filled with sorrow. As a younger boy, he often sat in the backyard, brooding and contemplative, his arms clasped over his knees. He was highly critical of things, a part of him that greatly resembled Father. He nailed small things to big crosses and would ponder for long on a wrong word he said to someone; he greatly dreaded the reprove of others. He had no place for ironies or satires; they troubled him.”
For more of Obioma's beautiful and profound prose see here
Do yourself a favour - read this book!
