Author Chigozie Obioma is fascinated by how people can act on opposite ends of the spectrum of human behavior. At a Thursday talk hosted through the Literary Arts Department’s “Writers on Writing” series, Obioma discussed his unique approach to writing about tragedy and read from his most recent novel, “The Road to the Country.”
Obioma’s debut novel, “The Fishermen,” won the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and the 2015 FT/Oppenheimer Emerging Voices Award for Fiction. He is also a two-time Booker Prize finalist and a professor of creative writing and English at the University of Georgia.
The lecture series is built into two literary arts courses: LITR 1200: “Writers on Writing” and first-year seminar LITR 0710: “Writers on Writing Seminar.” Students in both courses read and discussed “The Road to the Country” prior to the event.
In the novel, Obioma frames the experience of the war through a prophetic lens, largely told through the voice of a Seer. The story follows protagonist Kunle, a young man on a mission to rescue his brother amid the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, in the 1960s.
Obioma, who was born in Akure, Nigeria, said that his experiences as a child sparked his curiosity about the Biafran War. He recalls noticing that “a lot of people who came to visit (his family) had some form of deformity.”
“I remember being very shocked by the spectacle of this,” he shared. “I asked my parents, ‘What happened to these people? Why are they like this?’ And my mom said to me just two words: The war.”
There is a scarce supply of fiction that addresses the Biafran war, he said, adding that most novels addressing war focus on the civilians’ experiences. “Everybody seems to be afraid to write an actual war novel, to go into the battlefield.”
“I just try to write in such a way that you can visualize what happens,” Obioma said. “It’s not pretty, but it is the image of what actually went down.”
“You write about things like that as they are, not as they ought to be,” he added.
The novel shares this story through unique narrative voices.“I wanted to play with the traditional point of views,” Obioma said. “I use all three: the third person, the first person and the second person.”
Citing the double meaning of the word “novel,” Obioma stated, “I said to myself a long time ago that if I were to engage in the novel as a craft, I will try to add some newness to it, no matter how, which will reflect itself in a sort of unconventional type of structure.”
Attendee Madeline Goodwin ’29, a student in LITR 1200, said it was “interesting to see what the author wants you to take away from (a book) versus what you actually take away from it.”
“It felt more like a conversation and a dialogue, instead of just the reading,” Goodwin said.
Since students read Obioma’s work for class, “you really get the feel of the book beforehand,” Masha Malinkine ’29, who is also taking LITR 1200, said. “It makes it a lot more interesting to talk to someone about their work because you’ve already discussed it in class.”
Emma Chandler ’29 is not in either affiliated course but decided to attend the lecture after she had a “concentration crisis” and a professor suggested she look at the Writers on Writing series.
“It’s a really great way to be inspired and learn from people who are actually writing now,” she said.
Seyla Fernandez is a senior staff writer covering faculty.
