2024 in books

May 2025 bring Nigerians relief, the outgoing year has been one hell of a time for them. May they sing songs of joy in 2025 and may the sort of hassles the outgoing year brought to millions never be experienced again 

Millions of books have been published this year the world over. Some by traditional publishers. Others through self-publishing. Time and money conspired against me and I couldn’t read even zero point one percent of the published books.

Lucky me, almost all the ones I read made good impressions on me.

I began the year with ‘The Widow Who Died With Flowers in Her Mouth’, a collection of short stories by Chinua Achebe Prize for Literature winner Obinna Udenwe.

The stories in this collection, a worthy literary achievement, aren’t explained for the audience outside the milleu that gave rise to them. The author is apparently telling them to use Google or research phrases and words in Nigerian languages which he refuses to translate.

January also saw me reading Ayo Deforge’s perceptive debut, ‘Tearless’. In this beautiful read, spiced with the right dose of suspense, we learn that “friends become family and family become strangers. It happens all the time. Family is important but you can’t always force it.”

Another book that made the early part of the year worth the while was Yomi Adegoke’s “The List”. It brings to mind a proverb: “there’s no smoke without fire.” However, some aspects of this book also show that fire can sometimes arise out of contrived or alternative smoke. It is a perceptive look at the other side of the social media.

I also read British-Ghanaian writer Caleb Azumah Nelson’s sophomore novel ‘Small Worlds’, which explores relationships: family, friendship, and more. It dissects the dynamics of father-son relationship, nephew-aunt relationship, mother-son relationship and brother-to-brother relationship.

A few months after I read it, it won the £20,000 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize.

During the year I also read Chigozie Obioma’s ‘The Road To The Country’, a book I thought could win the Booker Prize. The novel tells the story of two men battling guilt which leads them to take decisions with far-reaching consequences. While that may seem far from extraordinary, trust Obioma to add a second layer that takes away the ordinariness with his clever choice of letting the story of one character unfold through the other’s ‘mirror’ (opon Ifa), which at first appears blurry but eventually becomes clear and meaningful.

Aside the divination touch, there is also something extraordinary about how the vision is presented. There is a sub-layer about the city of the dead, which gives the author a cosmic take on the war and the afterlife.

My attention was also caught by Damilare Kuku’s debut novel, ‘Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow’, one of those literary works that favour the less-used second-person narration. The 246-page work isn’t told entirely in the second person. Rather it uses three voices: first, second, and third.

Told in standard English with a bit of Nigerian English, familial politics, drug use, COVID-19 and more are other thematic concerns Kuku touches.

Humour is a tool that drives this novel. Funny lines such as “you are too young to be carrying slippers on your chest” enliven the pages.

With this book, you’re likely to feel that Damilare Kuku has used a very topical and controversial issue like butt enlargement to deliver an easy read that is warm and devoid of sermonising.

I also encountered Bolaji Olatunde’s wild imaginations in ‘The Heptagon Revolt’. His imaginations were so wild that dogs can hear what human beings are saying; however, human beings can’t hear dogs, a development, which makes it easy for them to plan their revolution against the human race.

Biyi Bandele’s posthumously-published retelling of Bishop Ajayi Crowther’s story, ‘Yoruba Boy Running’, also took my time and refreshed my memory about many a thing. I was surprised weeks later to find out that Bandele knew that was going to be his last book. His daughter and her mother revealed to The Guardian that he killed himself.

The novel is the second of Bandele’s works to be posthumously released. The first was his Netflix adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s ‘Death and the King’s Horseman’, which was made in Yoruba and titled ‘Eleshin Oba’. He directed the movie for Mo Abudu’s Ebony Life Studios.

‘In Yoruba Boy Running’, we encounter men proclaiming God’s greatness even as they behead their fellow men. We see men playing God and others eager to sell their conscience to gain the whole world. We see sons of the soil betraying the land of their birth and others simply being men; flawed and fallible.

‘Yoruba Boy Running’ invites us to interrogate the culture and tradition of the Yoruba and their gods as we drink deep from the well of wisdom of these interesting and forward-looking people. It also shows us and reminds us of a part of the slave trade that is not often talked or written about. We have heard and read more about men who used Christianity to pillage Africa. Bandele’s Ajayi story raises the spectre of black men screaming “Allahu Akbar” while perpetuating evil.

Reading Yasin Kakande’s ‘A Murder of Hate’ made me come to this conclusion: “Africa has its challenges, crazy and sometimes too bizarre to believe, but behind some of the problems afflicting the continent are unseen hands, the Big Brothers who enable bad leaders in the Third World in order to have unfettered access to their natural resources.”

In the middle of the year, Abubakar Umar Sidi took me to Golgotha for Garba Dakaskus to crucify me with his crazy debut novel, ‘The Incredible Dreams of Garba Dakaskus’.

The last quarter of the year saw me reading Umar Turaki’s ‘Every Drop of Blood Is Red’ and Nathaniel Bivan’s ‘Boys, Girls and Beasts’.

Turaki’s sophomore work is a spine-tingling affair between virtue exploration and a multilayered story arc. It is also a homage to Jos, the author’s city. We see it from every angle possible even as we love and hate it for what its people have done to it.

Bivan’s work has a futuristic setting which allows the author delve into the fantastical with remarkable freedom and the outcome can be likened to a meticulously constructed house, each brick laid with care, the cement perfectly mixed, the pillars solid, the furniture thoughtfully placed, resulting in a space that is not just functional but inviting and warm.

The author’s generous dose of poetic prose and a seamless blend of simple, compound, and compound-complex sentence structures infuse the writing with a vibrant, sizzling energy that enhances the storytelling.

Edify Yakusak’s ‘On A Day Like This’ made me ask her publisher, Masobe Books, to tell her I was in awe of her storytelling.

I also read a number of non-fictional works. Very remarkable is Ike Anya’s memoir ‘Small by Small: Becoming A Doctor in 1990s Nigeria’, which takes us behind the scenes of what it takes to be a doctor in Nigeria. Because he was trained in the 1990s, the book relies on what was obtainable then, but the truth is that though decades have rolled by, so many things remain unchanged; in some cases, things have become worse.

Kamala Harris’s life also fascinated me and Dan Morain’s ‘Kamala’s Way: An American Life’ filled me in. It tells us about her values, her priorities, her problem-solving capacity, her missteps, her risk-taking skills, and more.

Niran Adedokun’s ‘Every Journalist Should Write A Book’ inspired in me the belief that a number of our colleagues would either dust up their abandoned manuscripts or start afresh.

I equally had a good time with ‘Becoming Otondo: An Anthology of NYSC Travels Vol II’, an important project of ‘Fortunate Traveller’, funded by Goethe Institut.

My final take: May 2025 bring Nigerians relief, the outgoing year has been one hell of a time for them. May they sing songs of joy in 2025 and may the sort of hassles the outgoing year brought to millions never be experienced again.