We Have Come Home: a review of Prince of Monkeys.
Amatesiro Dore
Title: Prince of Monkeys
Author: Nnamdi Ehirim
Publishers: Counterpoint
Pages: 288
Genre: Political Fiction
Year: 2019
Price: unavailable in Nigerian naira
We have come home
From the bloodless wars
With sunken hearts
Our booths full of pride-
From the true massacre of the soul
When we have asked
‘What does it cost
To be loved and left alone’We Have Come Home, Lenrie Peters
A child has written a book, the memoir of a generation, with the corrupt voice of Nigerian millennials, documenting the failures of our elders and betrayal of our nation. Prince of Monkeys starts at the beginning when life was blue and white, the colours of a school uniform at Omole, previously non-existent in the canons of African literary imaginations. Five children are born without leprous conditions, un-afflicted by Nigerian tribalism, religious blindness and intellectual malaise. Unknown to them, they were born to fail, destined to disappoint and conditioned never to succeed the right way. No parental sacrifice can save them, prayers will never be answered and their dreams will always remain dreams.
In the traditions of Buchi Emecheta, Nnamdi Ehirim writes back to family, takes every character apart and says: look at you, I can see you, clearly! He questions identity, community and shows loyalty to Nigeria by rejecting a Biafran passport, Ndigbo tribal philosophies and celebrates Yoruba traditions as a true Lagos boy. With the audacity of Marlon James in A Brief History of Seven Killings, he dares to fictionalise Abami Eda, quotes the Nigerian laureate and Afrobeat founder in his first five thousand words without reverence, veneration or spiritual adulation. The man who had death in his pocket is just another character in the cast of citizens called Nigerians. And Ehirim panders to no one. Like a true millennial, he makes no attempt to explain anything, educate his audience or make allowance for ignorance. Nnamdi is not your friend, you can ask Google!
This is the greatest use of First Person perspectives in African literature. Ihechi Igbokwe is the rare Yoruba-Igbo with Lagos sensibilities, unbothered by the civil war despite inheriting the traumas alongside other communal inconveniences, parental madness and nationwide chaos. A century after The Heart of Darkness, Nigeria remains a country of monkeys led by baboons. Our saints are sinners, our mothers are incompetent and this country will kill your dreams. Ehirim offers a mirror into our politics, spirituality, phobias and possibilities. Who knew green could be traumatic? Nigerian wealth is portrayed as dirty, corrupt and mysterious like Major General, a veiled character who does everything behind the chapters of this book.
There is a balance between intelligence and the celebration of the mundane joys of existence. Edgar Allan Poe, King Jaja of Opobo and Hollywood celebrities are quoted or referenced by characters in a long line of shout outs to literary influences like Citizen Kane, The Great Gatsby and Death and the King’s Horseman. Ehirim’s puns are intended, titles of many great artworks form parts of his sentences, and he demystifies the brilliance of Adichie’s debut, Purple Hibiscus, at twenty six. He proves that anyone can write a great work when the book is ready and almost fully made.
Ehirim’s Ephesians and Thessalonians, Effy and Tessy, rivals Ifemelu, Kambili, Kainene and as many other feminist characters from Adichie’s imagination. He explores orisha better than Tomi Adeyemi, but leaves Igbo cosmology to Akwaeke Emezi and Chigozie Obioma. This writer cannot be bothered by the Igbo question. His only concern is the trouble with Nigeria without masquerading our homophobia and other small acts of national stupidity. Our fate as a nation is doomed and Ehirim proves it from the 80s to the 90s, questioning our faith, reminding us of our recent past and origins of our fraudulent democracy. In case we have forgotten how we treated Fela, how King Jaja of Opobo was poisoned and how Europe underdeveloped Africa, Prince of Monkeys is a timely reminder.
A small matter is exaggerated, a private experience is turned into a national problem and a circle of friends become the canvas for a lyrical, sensual and comical coming of age story of the problems with living and dreaming in Nigeria where we need gods to survive, to drive the streets at night, and to have a drink at an infamous watering hole. This is also a sugar mummy memoir where the difference between an Owambe and Gbedu are analysed. The pedestrian nature of the Nigerian dream is caricatured. Our youth are not too young to run, but are also too damaged to make any positive change, this novel seems to insist. None of the characters invents a thing, says a new thing or produces any thought that can transform their families… not to talk of Nigeria. All our dreamers live abroad and the beautiful ones are killed every day.
Prince of Monkeys is also about class, the transitions of Nigerian middle-class families from 1986 to 1998. As Omole, an upper middle-class suburb of Lagos, is transformed by the influx of new money, the residents are transformed by national happenings in nearby places like Ikeja, Egbeda and faraway hideouts at Ikate. Not even an escape to Enugu in south-eastern Nigeria can save the Nigerian dreams of these characters. And even when Effy leaves Enugu for an education in Lagos, Yoruba gods are waiting to test her faith and capture her imagination. Whatever happens in Northern Nigeria does not bother these characters, except when it concerns the Nigerian civil war, the powers that reside at Abuja, the nation’s capital, and the unseen hands that control our destinies like the Major General who we assume to be northern until otherwise revealed.
Prince of Monkeys is a Lagos book that pays homage to Enugu and the spirit of Southern Nigeria, saying: our sons have come home with sunken hearts, booths filled with pride and now we know what it costs to be loved and left alone.
About the author: Amatesiro Dore studied law at the Igbinedion University Okada and the Nigerian Law School. He is a 2019 writer-in-resident and fellow of the Wole Soyinka Foundation, 2009 alumnus of the Farafina Trust Creative Writers Workshop, and 2015 fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency. In 2016, he was awarded the Reimagined Folktale Contest and the Saraba Manuscript (Nonfiction) Prize. And his short story, For Men Who Care, was shortlisted for the 2017 Gerald Kraak Award. Recently, his works have appeared in the Johannesburg Review of Books, London’s Litro, and Harvard’s Transition magazine.
