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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"We are dying from a lack of hope.", 8 Jun 2004
Setting his novel during the 1990s, when Nigeria was a police state, author Habila focuses on Lomba, a frustrated novelist and journalist who is now a starving political prisoner in a Lagos jail, where he has served two years without a trial. Lomba has been keeping his mind alive by writing love poems and a journal, and when the writing is discovered, the jailer persuades Lomba to write love poems for the woman he is courting.In a series of short story-like episodes, the novel then flashes back to the years before Lomba's arrest, showing the effects of the dictatorial government on the ordinary citizens of Poverty Street in Lagos, including Lomba himself, as they try to maintain some semblance of hope in an increasingly hopeless world. With no chance of getting his novel published, Lomba has taken a job writing for the Dial, for which he occasionally reports on political demonstrations. In one of these demonstrations, led by Lomba's friend Joshua, unarmed people peacefully protest the neglect of their neighborhood, only to be attacked by fifty armed riot police with tear gas and truncheons. Horrifying depictions of everyday violence are presented with almost journalistic clarity, and Habila adds further realism by referring to well-known historical events of the time: the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa; the death by letter bomb of Dele Giwa, the editor of Newswatch magazine; and the shooting of the wife of a political opponent. The author's inclusion of a character named Helon Habila in the action adds further drama through the suggestion that much of the story may be autobiographical. In this paean to the spirit of democracy, Habila celebrates the lives of those courageous speakers and writers who have refused to be silenced, even when faced with death. "Every oppressor knows," a character says, "that wherever one word is joined to another word to form a sentence, there'll be revolt." This moving study of idealistic young people refusing to give up, even when faced with threats to their lives, is an unforgettable story of the human spirit waiting for an angel--and sometimes meeting the Angel of Death.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Days as black as pitch, 13 Mar 2003
Lomba is a political prisoner in Nigeria. He used to be a student in the capital city, Lagos, but then his roommate was attacked by soldiers and went mad. He used to be in love (perhaps he still is), but then his girl married a General with money. He used to be a journalist living on Poverty Street and writing for the Dial, but then the journalists were arrested and the Dial offices burned to the ground. And so he is in prison.WAITING FOR AN ANGEL starts out quietly sad, with Lomba already in prison, writing love poems for a prison superintendent in an effort to improve his lot. Whether he succeeds or not is speculated on but never really known, for the rest of the book is a flashback, told in first- and third-person accounts by Lomba and several others, including a 15-year-old boy sent to live with his aunt in Lagos as punishment for smoking marijuana. At times the reader learns about students fleeing their college; at other times about a small foods store and its twisted inhabitants. The jumps between time and place unfortunately do irreparable damage to the narrative's flow, but the prose is clean, the details sordid but evocative, and the desperation very real. The political unrest deepens and the death count rises as the demonstrations turn violent. When I started reading WAITING FOR AN ANGEL, I thought the angel in question would be one of freedom, one of hope, but I was wrong. It's the Angel of Death, who makes its appearance in the second chapter -- my favorite part of the book as I have often pondered what goes through people's minds as they are attacked by mobs and soldiers in toppling countries. Helon Habila does a skilled enough job in this debut novel of fear and frustration in 1990s despot-driven Nigeria that perhaps now I know. At the end of the narrative is an afterward describing the real-life crisis in Nigeria that fueled this small novel. Habila states that his goal was to capture the mood of those years, and in WAITING FOR AN ANGEL he has definitely outdone himself.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Important Stories, Dateline: Lagos, 1990s, 13 Feb 2003
Had George Orwell been a young Nigerian writer in Lagos in the 1990s, this is the book he might have written. Structurally, the book is comprised of seven short stories, which are arranged out of chronological sequence and vary from third person to first person narration. The opening piece is about a young journalist who is in his second year of imprisonment for being at a antigovernment demonstration. This is the story that won Habila the 2001 Caine Prize for African Writing, yet I found it to be the most banal portion of the book. The "writer in prison" is hardly a fresh subject, especially in African literature, and Habila doesn't take it anywhere it hasn't been before. Indeed, the warden's use of him to write love poems is straight out of a bad movie. This is just the setup though, as the rest of the stories "flashback" to journalist Lomba's life before prison.Despite various other narrators and characters, Lomba is the subject of the book, and through him one discovers its central theme: that those living under oppression can't pretend it doesn't exist, at some point they must stand up and denounce their rulers. This is unveiled through stories showing Lomba as a student, lover, struggling novelist, and arts reporter who tries his best to ignore the violence, poverty, and fear that permeate the city and country. The stories show the people around him going mad, having to compromise themselves, and being beaten by soldiers ("soja") for no reason. My own favorite section was also the longest, a 60+ page story narrated by a young country boy who is sent to Lagos to straighten up, and lives with his aunt in Lomba's old neighborhood. Eventually Lomba's mentor tells him he must stop pretending that he can live a normal life under a military dictatorship and he should be supporting those who have the courage to speak out. It's not a new message, but it is one that is evergreen. The book is very nicely written, with clean and evocative prose that captures the harsh reality of life under the "khakiocrastry." Using real events and real places, Habila skillfully blends fact with fiction to create an important glimpse into what will soon be the world's fifth largest city. Readers should note that the book's afterword is actually best read first, as it provides background on the Nigeria's politics that are essential context for the stories—indeed, it's puzzling that wasn't placed as a preface, since that's really what it ought to be.
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