The liquid eye of a moon A novel

Awoke's memorable debut chronicles the coming-of-age of Dimkpa, a teenager with limited prospects in Nigeria's hierarchical caste system. His father, the second-oldest man in their village, struggles to keep the family fed and sheltered, hoping one day to assume the supreme role of village elder. Dimkpa's loftier goals include attending secondary school and eventually earning enough money to lift his family out of poverty and afford a proper gravesite for his beloved aunt. When Dimkpa's father is passed over in favor of a younger villager, Dimkpa moves in with his cousin Beatrice in Lagos, where his desperation leads him to agree to take part in naked boxing matches in a rich man's mansion. He then tries and fails to become a quarry laborer in Awka, before returning to his village in defeat. After a tragic event, he gains a newfound maturity and a more realistic understanding of what is attainable for himself and his family. Keenly narrated by Dimkpa, the tale is shot through with Nigerian history and insights into the ways in which political and societal oppression stymie his attempts to get ahead. This artful story of resilience is tough to shake. Agent: Annie DeWitt, Shipman Agency. (June)

A young man struggles to support his family in a fractured Nigerian homeland. Awoke's debut novel is narrated by Dimkpa, whom we first meet at 14 getting a blunt education about Nigeria's social and political stratification. His mother is a devoted Catholic while his father is an adherent to Igbo tradition; when the father is bullied out of his promised role as a town elder, Dimkpa learns that his family has been deemed "ohu ma," or outsiders, by the community. But why? His search for answers (and money to support his family) takes him to Lagos, where an abusive Muslim matron pits the houseboys against each other for sport; to the meeting rooms of Biafran revolutionaries, who are dealing with their own internal strife; to quarries and mines where he and his friends risk their lives; to a university where he might put his passion for writing to use. (The book makes reference to numerous classic African and African American writers, including Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Alain Mabanckou, and Ralph Ellison, though Dimkpa has a particular affection for The Catcher in the Rye.) Lyrical interstitial chapters slowly disclose the mystery of Dimkpa's family status as ohu ma, but the prose is more typically plainspoken. That makes the story clear, but also dulls it somewhat: Awoke plainly aspires to offer a cross-section of contemporary Nigeria and its shortcomings, but it lacks the tart, satiric bite that would match Dimkpa's sense of injustice. And the strategy of bouncing across milieus means that characters and plot threads are occasionally dropped. Still, the novel has a sturdy spine in Dimkpa, who piles up psychic and physical scars throughout his travels as he realizes that to be loyal to any one tribe is to be complicit in factionalism and violence. "Hatred, it seems, is our heritage," he laments. A flawed but admirably ambitious bildungsroman. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.