“There are mosques in every corner of our town. In fact, Kontagora is over 70 per cent Muslim, like most of the north. On our streets are women in flowing chadors, men in jellabiyas and hulas. Christian girls who wear trousers or short skirts or display their cleavages are chased and whipped by Muslim youths, their trousers or skirts shorn with scissors.”
Fifteen-year-old Andrew Aziza lives in northern Nigeria, not the easiest of places to be a teenager. Along with the usual adolescent antics – lusting after girls, mooching about with friends, local parties – there is the constant threat of horrific violence from entrenched religious divides, fractured communities caught in a seemingly endless cycle of attack and reprisal, which turns everyday life into a deadly experience.
Teenage kicks and fundamentalist religion are tricky subjects for a novelist to balance, and Stephen Buoro is to be commended for the scope of his debut. He skilfully outlines the difficult existence of the townspeople, shedding light on why so many Africans undertake desperately dangerous journeys in a bid to escape to the West. Buoro brings the plight of such migrants to life, showing the urgency of their situation, in a way that news stories rarely do. He points to the hypocrisy of the West, the long shadow of Nigeria’s colonial past, the rich expat communities and stark double economies that continue to exist, fuelling an understandable sense of hopelessness among the poor.
Buoro was born and raised in Nigeria, where he received a first class degree in mathematics. Awarded a Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship in 2018, he is now studying for a PhD in creative and critical writing at the University of East Anglia. His first novel will no doubt be compared to other recent debuts set in contemporary Africa. There is strong competition from the likes of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi or His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie, both of which take place in Ghana. Closer to home for Buoro, there’s Oyinkan Braithwaite’s inventive, irreverent My Sister, The Serial Killer, set in a memorably opportunistic Lagos, and Chigozie Obioma’s Booker shortlisted The Fishermen, a vivid reimagining of old African myths in the Nigerian town of Akure.
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As with these novels, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries is full of vibrant detail on local culture. Buoro is particularly good on food, clothing and music. Andy tells the object of his affections – a white girl called Eileen – “that our propensity to always sing and dance shouldn’t deceive her into thinking we’re a happy people. Because we’re not. We’re a people of masks”. Moments like these add gravitas to the narrative. There is a notable energy to the text, a feeling of immediacy through the present tense voice.
Through Andy’s meandering musings, Buoro captures the neuroses of teenage life. Andy is literally brimming with anxieties and ideas; there is an infectious quality to his overenthusiastic proclamations on everything from mathematical theorems to his concept of “Anifuturism,” which he defines, somewhat cryptically, as the fusion of animism and Afrofuturism. Reflecting the dualities and dichotomies of modern Nigeria, this is a book that revels in doubles. Andy notes of his mother’s unhappiness: “I always imagine her other self: Mama two, who she’d be if she’d not been born on this crappy continent.” He speaks to a dead twin, who he calls Ydna, one of many instances of word play in the book, which cumulatively feel juvenile in tone, the kind of mad ideas that are forgivable in a teenager, or even a debut author, but less so in the editorial process.
The bigger issue is melodrama. The narrative lurches from one crisis to the next; climactic moments and reveals are not given their due. Andy’s emotional state appears to have only the one heightened register. This tendency to over-egg things can also be seen in the prose – a disgruntled friend has “serpents coil[ed] in her eyes, their fangs poised to strike” – and even in the structuring and title of the book.
Poor Eileen, meanwhile, is right out of a teenage boy’s fantasy, a platinum-haired, promiscuous young woman in a tight red dress, who “hopes to finally watch La Vie en Rose and finish Notes from Underground”. And that’s before we get to the unintentionally hilarious sex scenes: “The jet-black between my legs seems scared, at crossroads, stagnation all before it, but with the Platinum it somersaults, hikes across the wonderland around it, stands atop the tallest hill and sees some future peeking in the fog.”
Buoro just about gets away with it because there is the sense throughout the book that he is somewhere between mocking and decrying all the wrongs he has witnessed in his country. The result is The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, a wacky and energetic exploration of a gregarious young man coming of age in a very turbulent world.
