My dearest Sibling in Diaspora,
I'm writing you these letters from Africa, a place described as a jungle by Pink
people.
It was from there that your great-grandfathers and mothers were shipped away to
lands culturally different from theirs. They were forced into outfits that were
strange to them. They were made to live in a different climate, against their will
They were mullioned, decorated and a new life festered on them. A very different
life. More chaotic than they ever lived; translucently debilitating and quite
horrendous; more often than you would find in the hardship that young people who
are trafficked through Libya to Europe via the Mediterranean experience today.
I am writing to you with a sorrowful and angry soul, because what the Pink people
did to our fathers and mothers must never be forgotten or forgiven. We shall keep
demanding that they apologize, and ceaselessly remind them of their crimes
against humanity.
These are tasks we must discharge daily. If we failed to do those, the Pink people
would continue to manipulate and wound us. The Pink persons are evil; they
constitute an affliction upon the world. Their heartlessness is unrivaled. Therefore,
we must zealously repulse their advance.
I am only writing to you, to apologize for many misdeeds. I apologize to you, my
dearest Sibling in Diaspora, whom we allowed Pink people to take away from us.
They have said that we sold' you into slavery. I agree. We did, because if we
hadn't, no complicity would have been involved in stacking you on the ships. We
helped them take you away. This is why I am writing this letter to you.
To say, I am sorry and that you must forgive us for allowing them to take you
away.
Forgive us.
Nollywood actor, Uche Mbadiegwu leaves his Surulere neighborhood in Lagos, to Bandra in Mumbai to join Bollywood, so he could make it big, hoping to play exceptional roles.
Like a flash, Periwinkle appears in his life and changes everything. Tired of living in a pigsty, Efemena want to live a life of independence, but there is more to being a Nigerian in Mumbai - a constant escape from the Indian police and narcotics agents.
This novel is a tale of violence, drugs, human trafficking, murder and sex.
PROFESSOR MAGNUS NWOKEKE is dead.
Perceived as arrogant, proud and inaccessible, he is now in
the Land of the Dead, watching people, busy, preparing a
funeral party for him, in the Land of the Living.
He belongs to the Anglican Church in his village, Ezeoke
Nsu, so there is a Vigil, by the Umuokpu, a powerful clan
group made up of the families' first daughters, who are
seen singing at the back of the compound while having tea
and eating bread.
From the Other Side, Professor NWOKEKE can't stop
them, but he grins and whines and cringes.
Rajaswamy Rajagopalan, a Tamil Brahmin essayist is totally in love and happy with his East Nigerian Christian wife, Eunice Onwubiko. But there is a threat to their nine year-old marriage.On a trip to Nigeria from India, David, their only son travels in dreams with an albino dwarf, Nfanfa. A brain illness develops in David and this (alongside the mass deportation of Indians from Nigeria) sets the two families, Rajagopalan and Onwubiko crashing in their faiths as they battle differently to keep alive the chord that holds them together.
A young Haitian, Jean Claude, loses his parents in the earthquake that shattered
Port-au-Prince in 2010.
He is taken to an orphanage in France - a place that will shatter his memory.
Then, he finds his way to the University of Oxford, Where he is arrested for trying to
read at Weston Library.
What is his crime in life?
Nwelue's unusual character explores problems affecting Africa, childhood memories,
religion, colonialism. There's infusion of historical facts, which makes it a delight.
Powerful descriptions and profound imageries deployed all through.
Let us start from the beginning of this story when God created the heaven and the earth. Shapeless earth; nothing was real. It looked deep, like a well without water. Everything seemed ordinary. Its extraordinariness was brought about by the omnipotence of God. God solidified everything.
So, begin the opening lines of Onyeka Nwelue's Lemon Grass, where a young patient at the Neuro-Psychiatry Hospital in Yaba, Lagos, tells other patients his story, of how he had travelled from the Biblical Sodom to Lagos.
It is a retelling of the Biblical creation story. But the story soon jumps, to the occasion of Lot, his wife and his daughters. Only that the narrator's story is an escapee of the inferno.
He is in the police cell when he is rescued by a Catholic priest, Father Ajayi, who takes him to Rome. In Rome, the narrator goes to confession and narrates what life is like living with Father Ajayi. He confesses to witnessing paedophilia and suffering a whole range of sexual abuse under father Ajayi and his mistress, the Irish nun named Sister Mary.
Set inside the ward at Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Yaba, situated in Lagos, a young nameless narrator unravels a chilling tale of beauty, sexuality, abuse and mystery.