CANR
WORK TITLE: The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://stephenbuoro.com/
CITY: Norwich
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: Nigerian
LAST VOLUME:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1993, in Ososo, Nigeria.
EDUCATION:University of East Anglia, M.A., Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Previously, taught mathematics in Nigeria.
AWARDS:Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship, 2018.
RELIGION: Catholic.WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Stephen Buoro is a Nigerian writer based in Norwich, England. He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia.
In 2023, Buoro released his first book, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa: A Novel. In an interview with Robert Lee Brewer, contributor to the Writer’s Digest website, he discussed the intentions he had when he set out to write the book, stating: “I wanted to examine the following: the legacy of colonialism in present-day Nigeria, the inundation of Western culture in the country (it’s Americanization and Anglicization), the crumbling nature of the country, and how these three impact contemporary Nigerian identity and stimulate xenocentrism, the desire for otherness, for the West.”
In the book, the title character, Andrew Azizia, lives in the violent town of Kontagora, Nigeria. He idolizes life in the U.S. or England and longs for romance with a white woman. When Eileen, a white English girl, arrives to visit her uncle, Andy believe she can solve his problems. As he gets to know Eileen, Andy and the others in the town experience devastating conflicts between Muslims and Christians. In an interview with a writer on the Bloomsbury website, Buoro explained: “The novel could be described as a narrative about complicated love, about complicated relationships. First between mother and son; second between two young people of different skin colours and classes; third between Africa and the West.”
Critics offered mostly favorable assessments of the book. Lucy Popescu, reviewer in the London Observer, asserted: “There’s much to admire in this imaginative coming-of-age tale.” Writing in the London Guardian, Ian Williams praised “Buoro’s vibrant, nuanced representation of Nigeria. He does not exoticise or sanitise Africa for the western gaze. Instead, he presents west Africa’s complexity and contradictions, its competing influences.” A Kirkus Reviews critic called the book “a promising debut that upends the typical bildungsroman.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2023, review of The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa: A Novel.
London Guardian, April 13, 2023, Ian Williams, review of The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa.
London Observer, April 2, 2023, Lucy Popescu, review of The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa.
WebOnlyReviewsLJ, April 21, 2023, Sally Bissell, review of The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, p. 1.
Weekend Edition Sunday, April 23, 2023, Camila Domonoske, “Stephen Buoro on His Comic Novel The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa,” author interview.
ONLINE
Bloomsbury website, https://www.bloomsbury.com/ (April 20, 2023), author interview.
Chicago Review of Books, https://chireviewofbooks.com/ (May 8, 2023), Peter Riehl, author interview.
Shelf Awareness, https://www.shelf-awareness.com/ (June 23, 2023), author interview.
Stephen Buoro website, https://stephenbuoro.com/ (July 11, 2024).
Writer’s Digest, https://www.writersdigest.com/ (April 19, 2023), Robert Lee Brewer, author interview.
Stephen Buoro was born in Nigeria in 1993. He has a degree in Mathematics, an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, and a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing also from the University of East Anglia. He is a recipient of the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship. He was chosen as one of Publishers Weekly’s ten ‘Writers to Watch in Spring 2023’ and by The Observer as one of the ‘10 Best New Novelists for 2023’. His debut novel, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, was lauded by The Economist as being ‘among the best’ coming-of-age stories in contemporary African literature. It was shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards in the ‘Debut Fiction’ category, the L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and the Betty Trask Prize. Stephen lives in Norwich, United Kingdom.
Accolades
Betty Trask Prize 2024, shortlist
L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction 2023, finalist
Nero Book Awards 2023, shortlist
Aspen Words Literary Prize 2024, longlist
Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2024, longlist
Included in The Observer’s ‘10 Best New Novelists for 2023’
Included in Publishers Weekly’s ten ‘Writers to Watch in Spring 2023’
Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award 2020, second place
The Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship 2018
Stephen Buoro
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stephen Buoro
Born 1993 (age 30–31)
Ososo, Nigeria
Occupation Novelist
Alma mater University of East Anglia
Period 2023 – present
Genre Literary fiction
Notable works The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa (2023)
Stephen Buoro (born 1993) is a Nigerian writer known for his distinctive voice and narrative style in contemporary African literature.[1] He gained recognition with his debut novel, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa , published in 2023 by Bloomsbury.[2]
Personal life
Buoro comes from a strong Catholic background,[3] and describes the Bible as "the book that's defined my life."[4] He is the fourth of six children.[5] His parents migrated from northern to southern Nigeria to escape political turmoil, and Buoro was born in Ososo, a southern town.[5][6] The family later returned to the north, settling in Kontagora, the setting of his first novel.[6]
Buoro learned to read at the age of eight.[7] Despite his parents not being educated beyond primary school level, he credits the "wonderful conversations" he had with his "incredibly witty and funny" mother for his interest in writing: "She made me recognize the beauty, power, transfiguration, and transcendence that words attain in certain permutations."[7] Buoro received a scholarship to a missionary school,[5] where he received corporal punishment for speaking his local language.[8] At eleven, he began writing as a way of expressing his feelings after the death of his father.[9][5] Alongside self-publishing poetry on his blog, he had poems published in Nigerian magazines and newspapers.[9]
Career
After obtaining a first-class degree in mathematics,[2] Buoro worked as a part-time mathematics teacher for seven months in Nigeria,[8] earning a modest income.[10]
In 2018, Buoro received the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship[1] and commenced writing his first novel, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, on his BlackBerry phone.[9] The publishing rights for the book were sold for substantial sums in the UK and the USA,[2] and it was published in 2023 to generally positive reviews.[11] Buoro cites influences such as Chinua Achebe, Anthony Burgess, Junot Díaz, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and J.D. Salinger.[12]
Buoro holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia[13] and is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative-Critical writing at the same institution.[1]
Critical reception and award nominations
In 2020, an excerpt from The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa earned second place in the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award.[1] The judging panel, including Ian Rankin, praised Buoro for creating "a narrative of depth that also manages to be instantly engaging."[2]
In 2023, the novel was shortlisted for the inaugural Nero Book Awards in the 'Debut Fiction' category.[14] The judges described it as "extraordinary, driven by a gloriously eccentric central character" and "utterly compelling, not shy about posing difficult questions for the reader." However, they cautioned potential readers, stating, "don't expect it to provide any neat answers."[15] The novel was also longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize,[16] shortlisted for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction[17] and longlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award.[18]
The Guardian named Buoro as one of their ten best new novelists for 2023, describing The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa as "an exhilarating, tragicomic novel that questions what it means to come of age in Nigeria today."[5] The Economist also highlighted the novel's bildungsroman aspects, stating it was "among the best" coming-of-age stories in contemporary African literature. They offered a nuanced perspective on Buoro's writing style: "His sentences are mad, boisterous, incantatory—and, in a continent where rhythm is as common as praying, quite singular. The prose on any page could only be his."[19]
The Independent found the novel predictable in places, but added that "this can be forgiven as Buoro [...] brings Andy's world to life with such immediacy."[20] Interview Magazine called it "a bold demonstration of the Booker Scholar's cheeky and highly personal narrative voice."[7] The Chicago Review of Books praised the book's "hypersensitive attention to modern Nigerian life,"[9] while the African media company STATEMENT warned that "this novel doesn't cater to Western audiences or coddle readers who may not understand its idiosyncrasies."[8]
Bibliography
Buoro, Stephen (2023). The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1526637994.
FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 2023
THE WRITER'S LIFE
Reading with... Stephen Buoro
photo: Andrew Kahumbu
Stephen Buoro was born in Nigeria in 1993 and has an M.A. in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, where he received the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship and the Deborah Rogers Foundation Award. He lives in Norwich, U.K. His debut novel, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa (Bloomsbury), is a tragicomic novel that provides a lens into contemporary African life, the complicity of the West, and the challenges of coming of age in a turbulent world.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
My novel is about a smart and funny 15-year-old Nigerian boy who's obsessed with blondes, Afrofuturism, math, poetry, and who his true father is.
On your nightstand now:
Brutes by Dizz Tate. It's a brilliant coming-of-age story about girlhood, set in Florida. The descriptions, especially at the beginning of the novel, are so acute and tender that I feel as though I've lived in Florida before. Tate's sentential astuteness is outstanding--reminds me of J.M. Coetzee--and it was a privilege to meet her in person in March this year. I can't wait to read her next book.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I didn't have a definite favourite. Some of the books I loved include The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. These books made me more inquisitive about the world. The first one, in particular, drew me toward employing a bifurcated approach to observing/understanding phenomena, i.e., through science and the arts, maths and literature, which is what I sought to do in my novel, Andy Africa.
Your top five authors:
Chinua Achebe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel García Márquez, and Junot Díaz. What can I say? Apart from the pleasure of reading them, their works are instructive and nourishing.
Book you've faked reading:
Lord of the Flies by William Golding! I tried reading it several times as a teenager but never got beyond 20 pages. It felt so weird reading a book with no women in it, one with a character named Ralph, and another named Piggy. And it seemed to contain too much chitchatting. Thus, the quotation marks were preponderant and felt like winged insects frolicking towards me. Also, as an introverted teenager, the boys felt noisy and crazy to me. Now, as an adult, the concept of the book sounds compelling, and I've since read wonderful commentaries on the book, and I look forward to trying it again.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan. I love this book enormously, and I don't think many readers give it enough credit or recognise its ambition. Although many of the events it describes are brutal, it's an ambitious collection of stories that gives voice to the voiceless, and handles huge philosophical questions with great subtlety. It's a book everyone should read at least once.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I'm not sure I've done this before. But the vintage cover of Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee is harrowing and brilliant and perhaps encouraged me to buy the book. It goes without saying that Coetzee is such a master.
Book you hid from your parents:
A raucous, racy thriller called The Virgin Soldiers by Leslie Thomas. I first read it when I was 14, and it had the wildest sex scenes I'd ever seen in a book. So I hid it beneath a pile of boring books and visited it now and then.
Book that changed your life:
Black Boy by Richard Wright. I greatly loved this book. I read it when I was 13, and it changed the way I saw the world. Suddenly, I became aware of the colour of my skin, and I began to see through the monochromatic narratives of Hollywood and of Western culture. It depressed me, because it seemed to foreshadow the world that I would navigate as an adult: a racialized, unequal, violent world. Also, it bolstered in me the desire to become a writer, just like the narrator.
Favorite line from a book:
"For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it?" --from Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.
This sentence alone is sufficient evidence for why everyone should read literary texts, for they alone, arguably, can capture the essence of our human struggle and supplement the psychosomatic nourishment we need.
Five books you'll never part with:
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (the quintessential African classic; arguably the book that flung open the doors for African writers), The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (a powerful and instructive intertextual philosophical text), One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (always a pleasure to read; inimitable; a book that redrew the "rules"), The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola (a bewitching, polyphonic tale), and the Bible (the book that's defined my life; an astonishing literary text).
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Promise by Damon Galgut. I read it early last year and I can't wait to revisit it. It's a terrific novel that does innovative things with point of view, subjectivity, and interiority. I strongly relate to its themes of religion, class, race, nationhood--for they characterise my life and constitute the central themes of my debut novel, Andy Africa. I'm sure these themes will resurface in my subsequent writing.
Book you can't wait to read:
I've heard many wonderful things about Lesley Nneka Arimah's short story collection, What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, and I can't wait to finally read it. I'm intrigued by its ambition and scope and its generic range, spanning realism, magical realism, and speculative fiction.
QUOTED: "I wanted to examine the following: the legacy of colonialism in present-day Nigeria, the inundation of Western culture in the country (it’s Americanization and Anglicization), the crumbling nature of the country, and how these three impact contemporary Nigerian identity and stimulate xenocentrism, the desire for otherness, for the West."
Stephen Buoro: On Listening to the Character’s Voice
Author Stephen Buoro discusses what he learned from the constructive feedback he reveived on the early drafts of his debut literary fiction novel, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa.
ROBERT LEE BREWERAPR 19, 2023
Stephen Buoro was born in Nigeria in 1993. He has received a degree in mathematics and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia as the recipient of the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship. (Previous winners include Ian McEwan, Anne Enright, and Kazuo Ishiguro.) He has also received the Deborah Rogers Foundation Award. He lives in Norwich, United Kingdom.
Stephen Buoro: On Listening to the Character’s Voice
Stephen Buoro
In this post, Stephen discusses what he learned from the constructive feedback he reveived on the early drafts of his debut literary fiction novel, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, the importance of writers creating their own rules, and more!
Name: Stephen Buoro
Literary agent: Nicola Chang, David Higham Associates; (David Evans temporarily)
Book title: The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Release date: April 18, 2023
Genre/category: Literary fiction
Elevator pitch for the book: The novel is about Andy Aziza, a smart and funny 15-year-old boy, coming of age in present-day Nigeria. He’s obsessed with blondes, whiteness, life abroad in the West, who his true father is, and these obsessions are intensified when his life is suddenly destabilized by communal violence.
Stephen Buoro: On Listening to the Character’s Voice
Bookshop | Amazon
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What prompted you to write this book?
I wanted to examine the following: the legacy of colonialism in present-day Nigeria, the inundation of Western culture in the country (it’s Americanization and Anglicization), the crumbling nature of the country, and how these three impact contemporary Nigerian identity and stimulate xenocentrism, the desire for otherness, for the West.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
It took about five years. I first got the idea for the novel one evening in June 2018 while I was sitting in my living room in Nigeria. A voice suddenly came to me. The voice was full of so much urgency, energy, shame, sadness, the desire to confess. So, I picked up my BlackBerry and I began to follow the voice, to give it room to express itself, to try to understand it.
After writing about 500 words, I stopped and began to reread all that I had written. I discovered that it was the rawest, most “truthful” and animated piece of writing I had ever composed up till that time. This piece became the opening of the novel.
After this groundbreaking moment of inspiration, I spent some weeks sketching the characters, the plot, composing vignettes: I jotted down everything that came to me. Afterwards, I spent two and half weeks writing the first draft. On my BlackBerry. I wrote feverishly, night and day.
Around that time, I received an offer to study for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. When I began my course, for my first workshop I submitted the first chapter of the novel. The feedback was ecstatic, hugely encouraging. For my next workshop, I submitted the second and third chapters. This time, the feedback was mixed to negative. This feedback turned out to be hugely invaluable, for it forced me to rethink the entire novel, identify what I wasn’t doing well, gave me a fresh perspective on the narrative.
I decided to trash the entire first draft save for the first two pages. I reconstructed the novel, broadened its scope, introduced a few characters as well as removed others, and began writing again. This second iteration was organic, and it took me nearly two years to complete.
After securing publishers for the novel, I worked on the book for over two years—rewriting, polishing—guided by my editors.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
The entire publishing process has been hugely illuminating to me. It’s been interesting to see how people in the publishing industry—creative writing tutors, agents, editors, publicists, journalists—engage books differently. I’ve learnt hugely from my editors, of course. It’s also surprising to see how publishers collaborate with each other, and how everyone in the industry (at least here in the U.K.) seem to know each other.
Stephen Buoro: On Listening to the Character’s Voice
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Many. Plot strands that I ended up not using, characters who changed, chapters that I thought were the best stuff I’d ever written which ended up in my bin. In fact, the book itself is a huge surprise. I never imagined I would ever write a novel that might be described as “satiric,” “playful,” even “tragicomic.” I thought I was a different sort of writer ... Hence, this book has been hugely revelatory.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
There are a hundred things that I could hope for, but my greatest desire is that they enjoy reading it, just as I have, the many times I’ve read it.
Being a writer often entails discovering your “rules” and sticking to them no matter what. But now and then, you’ve got to break these rules. Every writer always knows when.
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QUOTED: "The novel could be described as a narrative about complicated love, about complicated relationships. First between mother and son; second between two young people of different skin colours and classes; third between Africa and the West."
STEPHEN BUORO ON THE FIVE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES OF ANDY AFRICA
“We had two selves, African and Western, in constant oscillation and collision with each other”
Stephen Buoro author photo
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BLOOMSBURY | APR 20 2023
Stephen Buoro opens up about writing his debut novel, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa, the strength of Western influences and winning the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa is your debut novel. Why did you give it this title? When did you start writing the novel and what began the writing process?
STEPHEN: The Five Sorrowful Mysteries is a prayer of the rosary my family and I often said while I was growing up. One evening while writing the novel, I suddenly realised that the life of Andy Aziza, the narrator and protagonist of my novel, as well as the trajectory of the story, strongly mirrored this prayer. Thus, I decided to give the novel this title. I think it’s an intriguing, malleable, and multipurpose title with many interpretations. I don’t want to go into possible explanations – I think readers who read the novel will fully grasp it and in fact produce personal, even more powerful interpretations of it. But in terms of representing the narrative, I think the title does so effectively, even though it’s also slightly deceptive, for the novel has been described as ‘tragicomic’. Moreover, I’m hugely invested in ‘intertextuality’, how texts speak to and reference each other. To me, intertextuality engenders the cohesion of literature, to a streamlining of it, so that texts as ‘dissimilar’ as The Epic of Gilgamesh and Things Fall Apart could be seen to collaborate, fuse, proselytise a similar message, bring about a reconceptualization of the world and humanity. Perhaps my interest in intertextuality stems from my background in Catholicism (scripture) and mathematics (which often references and seeks to link disparate branches of its theory). Nevertheless, I hope many readers who read the novel get to realise that it’s sort of a ‘literary prayer’, Andy praying not just for himself, but for his community, country, and continent as well.
I began writing the novel in Nigeria in June 2018. One evening I was sitting in my living room when a voice suddenly came to me. The voice was full of so much urgency, energy, shame, sadness, the desire to confess repressed thoughts. So I picked up my BlackBerry and I began to follow the voice, to give it room to express itself, to try to understand it. After writing about 500 words, I stopped and began to reread all that I had written. I discovered that it was the most truthful and eviscerating piece of writing I had ever composed up till that time. This piece became the opening of the novel.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa is told by Andrew Aziza, a 15-year-old young man living in Nigeria. Can you tell us a bit about him and why you wanted to tell this story from his perspective?
STEPHEN: Andy is a smart and funny fifteen-year-old boy who is obsessed with blondes, whiteness, sex, who his true father is, life abroad in the West. He’s also preoccupied with pop culture, maths, poetry, Afrofuturism. He is ashamed of his poverty, his uneducated mother, and of course, his desire for white girls. So in the novel, Andy battles with this desire and shame, and this battle is further intensified when his life is suddenly destabilised by communal violence.
I didn’t deliberately choose to tell his story from his perspective – this decision was made unconsciously. His perspective presents the simplest and most engaging way to render the narrative. He is fifteen, living in a place that most readers aren’t familiar with, fighting many psychological and socio-economic battles, and it just felt natural to present the story from his perspective. So that, through his first-person POV, the reader partakes in his journey and fully empathises with him, and his story thus feels more personal, visceral, urgent.
You have studied and taught both mathematics and writing, and poetry and maths are prominently featured in the book. Can you talk about your decision to include both of these disciplines in the book and how they help Andy on his path of self-discovery?
STEPHEN: When I was fifteen like Andy, I found poetry and maths hugely therapeutic. They were my canvases for spray-painting my rioting emotions, angst, hopelessness, daily frustrations, my spaceships for momentary escapes. They were amazing tools for scrutinising and unravelling myself. One of the greatest breakthroughs I had while writing Andy Africa was realising that maths/science, poetry/literature weren’t antithetical at all; that they were in fact pursuing the same thing (‘truth’, comprehension); that they were all parts of me, and they would provide interesting modalities for Andy to vent, to scrutinise and understand himself, his community, and the world.
Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa book jacket
“Funny and poignant”
Los Angeles Times
Stephen Buoro
The influence of the west plays a big part in the lives of Andy and his friends and their ambitions. Born and brought up in Nigeria yourself, how much does their experience mirror your own?
STEPHEN: This is such a powerful and important question that I’m rendered speechless by its enormity, by the whirlpool of ideas and emotions that want to spurt from me. Almost everything about me has been shaped (at varying degrees) by the West. Almost everything. What I eat, say, or think, where I call home. Even my very name: Stephen Buoro. I’m a raging composite of the West and Africa. This is what I sought to depict in my novel.
I think the following passage from my PhD thesis gives a snapshot of how my life has been shaped by the West:
Growing up in Northern Nigeria in the 2000s, I felt that my identity – as well as those of my peers and siblings – was a bifurcation. We had two selves, African and Western, in constant oscillation and collision with each other. At home with our parents, we were African: we ate Nigerian food, our parents made us speak our Nigerian mother tongues, tried to inculcate in us our culture, the oral histories of our tribes. But when we were alone or with our peers, we were Western – Americans, British, French. We chatted endlessly about American films and comic superheroes, life in London and Paris, the tastes of pizzas and burgers, even though we had never travelled abroad or tried these Western foods. We inundated our speech with Americanisms, put on American or British accents, fantasised about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. At night, we prayed to the Western God in English with our parents; on Sundays we went to church and worshipped the white Jesus on his brown cross. At school, we jeered at mates who mispronounced English or French words; our teachers caned us or meted out on us corporal punishments when we spoke Nigerian languages or Pidgin English. I wanted to depict all this in my novel, their imprints on our psyche, on our perception and conceptualisation of the world.
Religion and faith seem to me to be quite pivotal in this novel – a source of comfort and conflict throughout. And essential to it. Would you agree?
STEPHEN: Yes, definitely. Partly answered in my response to the previous question.
Just like in many postcolonial societies, religion is a primal, powerful force in Nigeria. It intertwines and preordains almost every other system: socio-economic, political, educational, historical… Writing about Nigeria is writing about religion, for it is a country where almost everyone is religious or conditioned to be religious.
Writing about Nigeria is writing about religion, for it is a country where almost everyone is religious or conditioned to be religious.
Stephen Buoro
You have spoken about The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa as a love story, three ways. What do you mean by this?
STEPHEN: Yes, in a way, the novel could be described as a narrative about complicated love, about complicated relationships. First between mother and son; second between two young people of different skin colours and classes; third between Africa and the West.
How has being awarded the Booker Prize Foundation scholarship affected your life?
STEPHEN: The Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship has been quite transformative in my development as a writer. Without it, I would’ve been unable to study Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, or to fully pursue my lifelong passion for writing. Just before I received the scholarship, I was a mathematics teacher in Nigeria. Each month I was paid a pittance. To afford to study at UEA, I would’ve had to work for several decades and saved everything I earned. In practical terms, the scholarship paid for my tuition, my flight to the UK, and provided me with a monthly stipend. Without the scholarship, I don’t think I would’ve written my debut novel, or at best, would’ve completed it so quickly. Besides, the scholarship injected in me more belief – in myself, my craft.
Which authors or books influenced you as a writer?
STEPHEN: Every book I’ve read has influenced me in some way. Some of the writers who influenced Andy Africa include: J. D. Salinger, Anthony Burgess, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (particularly The Brothers Karamazov), Vladimir Nabokov, Chinua Achebe, and Junot Díaz.
Stephen Buoro Brings to Life “HXVX,” a Loveable Teen Protagonist, and Modern Nigeria in All its Beauty, Contradictions, and Permutations
BY PETER RIEHL, HOST OF THE CHILLS AT WILL PODCAST
MAY 8, 2023
Our interview with Stephen Buoro about his new novel, "The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa."
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Stephen Buoro’s debut novel The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa announces the arrival of an exciting new verbal craftsman with a fresh voice, or perhaps multiple voices. There’s the Stephen Buoro who creates a memorable and sympathetic character in the book’s titular Andy Africa, there’s the Stephen Buoro whose satirical language is hilarious and reflection-inducing, there’s the Stephen Buoro whose hypersensitive attention to modern Nigerian life educates and pulls in the reader emotionally, and there’s the Stephen Buoro who writes texts within the text—little poems, permutation theory description, and math formulas to describe the phenomenon of “HXVX,” for example—that leave the reader in awe of the writer’s versatility and prowess.
I spoke with Stephen about, among other topics, his inspiration and seeds for the novel, ideas of change in Nigeria, the book’s complementary characters, the West, and the reverence and distaste in which it is held by the main character, permutation theory, “HXVX” and “Anifuturism,” and the importance of his perspective in writing about such heavy topics after moving from Nigeria to the UK.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pete Riehl
I wonder what made you say, I can do this. What made you want to become a writer, and what were some of the “ ‘Eureka’ moments?” Did you have a blog like Andy Africa in the novel, did you win a prize? What were some of the catalysts for you getting into writing?
Stephen Buoro
(Laughs) I had a blog, yes.
Pete Riehl
Didn’t we all?
Stephen Buoro
I wrote poetry on my blog, and some of my poems were published in some Nigerian papers and magazines.
I found myself writing in 2005 one afternoon after finishing my homework. I was sitting outside my house. It was like 40 plus degrees Celsius, very hot. Suddenly I just found myself writing a story.
It was like I was doing something spiritual and illegal at the same time. It felt very empowering. I wrote a story about a war in the animal kingdom, how the fish were ostracized, forced away from the land, made to live in water, and how they were forced to struggle and adapt.
When I was writing this story as an eleven-year-old, I could do whatever I wanted [with my creativity and imagination]. I had this huge love for words. I just can’t describe it.
I mean, they’re just letters, they’re just words, I know, but [the effect is outsized] in what they can do and the impact they have on our psyche and our emotions. So I just had this huge love for words and a love and fascination for words—for writing, for the spoken word, the written word.
It all came from, I think, my experience of being a Christian, right? My parents would take me to church and all that and in the Catholic church then, the priests would read from this sacramentary, from these big books, holy books, and it’s really some wonderful poetry. You wonder, Who composed all this stuff? Where did they come from and who were they? Like, what were they thinking about? I mean, I was so fascinated with all these things.
Pete Riehl
I wonder then, about perspective. As you got into writing this book and working on it-I’m not sure exactly when you moved to the UK-but I have the notion that perhaps moving to the UK allowed you to write about Nigeria, with the mindset that when it’s been five years or ten years or 15 years, you see your home or you see your place in that home differently.
Stephen Buoro
Luckily for me anyway, I began writing this book in Nigeria in June 2018 and wrote it very quickly [in draft form] within two and a half weeks, on my BlackBerry phone, because I used to love my phone. I wrote night and day, quick drafts in Nigeria, and then I came to the UK to study for an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. When I came to the UK, that began the second iteration of the novel. From the first draft, I saved the first two pages, which came to me in a very wonderful moment of inspiration. So I saved the first two pages and then began from scratch for the second iteration of the novel. This was really helpful and powerful, as it made the story come even more alive because I was now a bit far from home, now there was a sense of distance, and I could see [Nigeria] in a much more clear way. The emotions were more intense and there was this huge clarity, this huge clarity that came from this distance. Those aspects of myself, aspects of my family, my friends, my community, I could just see them so clearly. So I was just writing with so much anticipation, so much joy.
Pete Riehl
There’s a scene in the book with Eileen and Andy. Eileen says she’s reading his poem and she says it’s moving and Andy remarks that it’s amazing how a work of art can live beyond its creator, outside of its creator. I wonder how much you feel like the book is timely, like for 2023, but also how it’s maybe talking about 1980s or 2000s Nigeria?
How much of a sense of place do you feel this book has, being that you talked about how you’ve been working on it for a long time?
Stephen Buoro
Nigeria, my country, is where this novel is set, and in this postcolonial country, so many things are happening, and when you observe the history of the country, you begin to see that there are so many constants, right? So many things that haven’t changed. They are still the same and they’ll remain the same even in the next 50, 100, 200 years or something.
It’s also a place of so much turmoil. It’s a country that is formed of like three, four, or five countries or so perhaps all those melded together, forced to become one, and we’re still trying to understand who we are in Nigeria. What is this all about and who we are as Nigerians—that is a constant question.
I think for the next 100 years, 200 years, Nigerians will still be asking [these questions], and then there’s the whole concept of postcolonialism, about what happens to a people who have been subjugated and exploited, who have had their sense of self shattered. That’s what the book is about, exploring postcolonialism, but also colonialism, and themes of the collapse of governments, corruption, and that search for identity and search for self.
Corruption and the collapse of government, for example, are themes that have been part of Nigeria since independence, since 1960, and my parents were dealing with these issues even when they were little. My older siblings have been dealing with these issues, and now I’m dealing with them. [In my writing] I want to follow that trajectory. You almost become so cynical, so pessimistic about the country that that sense of cynicism and pessimism definitely comes through.
Pete Riehl
The book is structured into the Five Sorrowful Mysteries, with the title being The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa. The Agony in the Garden is the first. It’s fitting that we’re talking a day before Easter, where all of these take place-Holy Thursday, Good Friday-within 48 hours as far as you know the Christian calendar goes. It’s the Agony in the Garden, the Scourging at the Pillar, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, and the Crucifixion. And then with each of those, there’s a theorem, And this idea of a permutation and permutation theory. I’m so impressed with the “mathematicalness” of it, if that’s a word.
I wonder how permutation theory comes into play. Permutation in my basic understanding is the idea of the different ordering of things, and so are you trying to get at the arbitrariness of life in some ways? Why was I born here? Why was she born there? Why was the sister born first? I wonder what you were going for with the permutation references?
Stephen Buoro
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This is a very powerful question. The suggestion you made about the order of things and like, why was I born here? The randomness of things. That’s a good explanation, too. But I think one of the things I was going for in writing this book, I mean, I have a background in mathematics. My first degree was in maths.
I began to realize how many things like being Nigerian, being Black, being African, for example, had so much to do with permutations, because permutations are about a discrete but definite arrangement of things. I mean, you could have three elements. You could have, let’s say a ball. You could have a water bottle. You could have a kettle. Let’s take this order as the original arrangement. Once you change this arrangement, for example, you bring the kettle first and then the ball and then the water bottle, everything about the ordering/sequencing of these elements is completely changed. You have altogether something new, a new logical system. I was thinking how race is just like a permutation; being Black, being white, and all the ways in which we humans are ordered, and that’s what I’m examining in the book: the sense of a dual identity. For example, I see Andy as having these two selves, this African self and this Western self, and these selves are ordered in different ways. Other young Africans, many postcolonial people like my friends and I when we were young, we had these two selves in continual conflict and we were ordering those in different ways. We’re looking at how things like race, class, and even the intersectionality of life, have to do with permutations.
Pete Riehl
“HXVX” is a term used by Andy, something he sees as its own malevolent entity. In the book, it’s described as a tetragrammaton shorthand for the curse of Africa. There’s even a math formula Andy uses [to define its meanings]: “HXVX equals Sauron plus Thanos.” There is this idea of the infinity sign that signals that the curse of Africa-HXVX- is in some ways infinite, which obviously shows that there’s a pessimism that Andy often has, but HXVX also gives Andy an enemy as he imagines himself a superhero.
Stephen Buoro
Andy feels that it’s his destiny to destroy all these forces like colonialism, kleptocracy, slavery, all these huge negative things and objects that have befallen Africa and Africans. Andy conflates these negative forces into a construct he calls HXVX. So in the narrative, Andy is essentially battling HXVX. The narrative is also like a superhero story, and superheroes usually have supervillains that they are in conflict with. Superheroes of course also have origin stories and alter egos and it’s his own alter ego, Ydna, who he’s in constant confrontation with. I mean, he loves this person, and he wants to be that person, but he also doesn’t want to be that person at the same time. These are the complications caused by the legacy of HXVX.
Pete Riehl
There’s also a lot of optimism with Zahrah, right? She’s a very interesting character. She’s maybe 30, so she’s not way older than Andy, and she’s kind of like a cool older sister or aunt. She’s a teacher and she’s quite eccentric. She doesn’t write, you know, canon literature. She writes a lot about “Anifuturism,” the idea of animism mixed with Afrofuturism. How would you define Anifuturism, and how did you draw on real-life philosophies and theories for this Anifuturism?
Stephen Buoro
Anifuturism is a fusion of animism and Afrofuturism. In the novel, Zahrah creates this idea and movement as a way for Black people to reclaim the history and heritage that have been stolen from us by slavery and colonialism. To create a future that we’ve been denied. Zahrah uses these two disparate elements, on the one hand, animism, how the world is animated, and how everything about the world is sacred, is alive, and why we have to give huge respect to nature and things around us. So Anifuturism is a way of reclaiming the future and the past that Black people have always been denied.
This interview is excerpted from Episode 178 of the Chills at Will Podcast. Listen to the complete conversation here.
FICTION
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa
by Stephen Buoro
Bloomsbury Publishing
Published on April 18, 2023
QUOTED: "There's much to admire in this imaginative coming-of-age tale."
Byline: Lucy Popescu
There has been a spate of excellent novels about Nigeria, its past and present predicaments. Set in the predominantly Muslim town of Kontagora, Stephen Buoro's debut is overstuffed with themes, from corruption and religious intolerance to identity and teenage desire, but there's much to admire in this imaginative coming-of-age tale.
Fifteen-year-old Andrew Aziza, nicknamed Andy Africa, is an altar boy in the neighbourhood church. He lives with his single-parent photographer mother, who refuses to reveal the identity of his father. Skilled in maths and poetry, Andy ponders various theorems and "HXVX" -- his mathematical shorthand for "the curse of Africa". His teacher dismisses it as a construct for "everything negative that has befallen Africa: slavery, colonialism, dictatorship, kleptocracy, xenocentrism" and claims that by "conniving with HXVX, we've made Africa the heart of darkness... for not believing in her".
Seduced by Hollywood, Andy prefers blonds. He yearns for a white girlfriend and the lifestyle of an American or European. At the start of the novel he looks unlikely to achieve his ambitions until he meets Eileen, the niece of Father McMahon, at a welcome party. When an anti-Christian protest spirals into bloodshed, Andy's life is irretrievably altered.
Religion -- the title refers to the meditations on the five stages of Christ's suffering -- maths and poetry shape Andy's identity. I'd have liked more about his friends: Slim is queer and lives in fear of being outed. Morocca is a rapper and father of a two-year-old daughter. Inevitably, the western culture they are fed reels them in. They know the dangers of being caught in lawless Libya -- when a traumatised local, Oga Oliver, returns from there, he repeats only one word: "Water!" But their classmate Okey makes it across the Sahara and into Spain. His joyful messages and Nigeria's volatile political climate persuade them to follow him.
Buoro's plot occasionally meanders, but his descriptions of protests and communal violence are astute, and he sensitively conveys what pushes his fellow countrymen to risk everything to reach Europe.* The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro is published by Granta (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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'Much to admire': Stephen Buoro.
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"The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro review -- astute story of self-discovery; The author's debut novel is an imaginative tale about a troubled Nigerian teenager's rite of passage." Observer [London, England], 2 Apr. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A744061936/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5d7c56d6. Accessed 25 June 2024.
QUOTED: "Buoro's vibrant, nuanced representation of Nigeria. He does not exoticise or sanitise Africa for the western gaze. Instead, he presents west Africa's complexity and contradictions, its competing influences."
Byline: Ian Williams
This ticks all the boxes of a literary blockbuster. It's a debut novel by a promising Nigerian writer and Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship recipient. It comes with a dreamy publication backstory involving an eight-way auction, pre-empt deals, meaty advances and praises galore. The book features a voice that is upbeat, familiar, catchy and breezy as a pop song:
Dear White People,
I love white girls. Especially blondes. Blondes who wear their hair in ponytails and once a week in pigtails. Is this a fetish?
A Black boy in love with white girls. If you don't think about it too much, it's amusing, especially if you're white. After all, a Black man is writing, so you're at liberty to enjoy the premise, and, more perversely, to have validated an unspeakable, inevitable and "natural" aesthetic superiority that transubstantiates white people into beings of worship. If you're Black, the smile is tight. You think, Danger! Brotha, no! Please don't feed them that.
But Buoro takes the risk in this bildungsroman of 15-year-old Andy Aziza. In the more sensational of the two plotlines, Andy hangs with his "droogs" and tries to control his hormonal desire for white girls. It's the stuff of romantic comedy, complete with confessions of love, meltdowns, pursuits through airports. There's even an overlooked girl next door. In the second storyline, Andy loves his mama, wonders about his father, and communes with his stillborn brother.
Both storylines are set within Buoro's vibrant, nuanced representation of Nigeria. He does not exoticise or sanitise Africa for the western gaze. Instead, he presents west Africa's complexity and contradictions, its competing influences: Kannywood and Hollywood, hijabs and Gucci, egusi and Sprite. The tensions between Islam, Christianity and traditional African spiritual beliefs are powerful enough to wrench both plotlines from their trajectories into unexpected futures.
Buoro loves a dramatic reveal. Backstory crashes in on the present. Mysterious men appear. Relations are clarified. The big secrets stretch suspense over the entire novel while other revelations have a brittle, fleeting thrill. There's even a Luke-I-am-your-father moment that ventriloquises Star Wars .
Buoro does not exoticise Africa for the western gaze; instead, he presents west Africa's complexity and contradictions
Indeed, The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa is a novel written in an age of screen ubiquity. The screen remakes the conventions of the novel, alters the assumptions of what constitutes a dramatic turn, and amplifies the pitch of violence and sex. Drama becomes melodrama. Action becomes acting. Occasionally, the characters do not so much speak as say their lines. Our main characters are teenagers, true, but they needn't have diminished emotional capacities. In fact, the teen years arguably carry more inner turbulence -- prime literary material -- than adulthood.
What's a bildungsroman without an epiphany? Andy's leads to a gripping climax and a subsequent epiphany, evidence that our boy has grown as a character. He was always a likable yet flawed protagonist. While tragic events befall him, Andy remains the author's darling. Buoro affectionately mocks Andy for "the four strands of beard under his chin", but Andy's self-regard is much more severe. He speaks of himself in lower evolutionary terms: "I'm a Homo habilis"; "the pig and ape that I am"; "Is she not afraid I might stain her, my colour jump onto her like in those monster horror films?" Contrast that language with the "white seraph", "her meadows and perfect skin", "her platinum Strands of Power", and the danger signs flash again. In the hands of a poor reader, this book is a dangerous weapon.
But we're meant to see Andy's desire as silly. We're meant to be troubled. Buoro reveals how much our tastes have changed from the poison that we once consumed, that Andy still consumes.
There's an unsettling passage in the novel where Eileen, the white visitor to Nigeria, speaks "flawless" Hausa then laughs at Andy when he says innit. She censors him: "Don't say that." In other words, she feels at liberty to speak his language while policing English, which is also his language. It's a provocative theme: who sets the boundaries of our language or our desire? To the potential of our lives, who says, this far and no farther?
Buoro commits to representing diversity within Blackness, the way Toni Morrison does. His two best droogs are a gay character and a horny comic sidekick -- perhaps too conveniently cast. But unlike Morrison, the status of the white character, Eileen, reigns over the book. It makes me wonder, why aren't the lives of Black people enough to frame a story? Why is the salient thing about this novel the white girl, who is not particularly interesting as a character?
You wouldn't be wrong to read the book as satire of a certain kind of Black aspiration, or as an allegory of Africa and the western imperialist project. Or you could read it as itself, without abstracting its particularities: the story of a boy doing his best under the assault of powerful western influences and illusions. Buoro doesn't preach or judge. He leaves us suspended between interpretative options. He seems uninterested in making us woke. Like Morpheus, in one hand he holds a delusion, and in the other he holds reality.
* Ian Williams is the author of Disorientation: Being Black in the World. The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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Dramatic reveals ... Stephen Buoro.
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"The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa review -- high-risk comic debut; Stephen Buoro's tale of a teenager in Nigeria, hanging with his friends and hankering after white girls, ticks all the boxes of a literary blockbuster." Guardian [London, England], 13 Apr. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A745509492/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=aa2be381. Accessed 25 June 2024.
QUOTED: "a promising debut that upends the typical bildungsroman."
Buoro, Stephen THE FIVE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES OF ANDY AFRICA Bloomsbury (Fiction None) $28.00 4, 18 ISBN: 978-1-63557-777-8
A Black Nigerian teen has high hopes for a romance with a visiting White girl.
Andrew "Andy" Aziza, the narrator of Buoro's rich debut novel, is infuriated at nearly everything in his life. His hometown, Kontagora, is prone to violent clashes between its Muslim and Catholic communities. African culture, he thinks, can't measure up to the sophistication and cool of England and the United States. (Indeed, he detests all of "this crappy continent.") He's bereft of a father and carries on conversations in his head with his stillborn brother, whom he calls Ydna. He takes some comfort in his friends and his mother, a local photographer. But in his eyes, salvation (and the religious rhetoric here runs deep, from the title on down) can only truly arrive in the form of Eileen, a niece of the local priest visiting from the U.K. It's not hard to see that disappointment is coming--and Buoro overextends the path getting there. But he doesn't lapse into easy clichés about loving what you have. It also helps that Andy is a winning narrator, by turns self-deprecating and sardonic ("I haven't seen a blonde before. Because this is Africa. And there are -0.001 blondes here") and lyrical as well, thanks to Andy's poetry, interspersed throughout. Since Andy and Eileen's trajectory is fairly predictable, its most engaging elements involve the B-plots: the religious attacks, the difficulty of escaping the country, the surprising ways literature can spark a connection. (Eileen and Andy bond over Kafka's The Metamorphosis, which is doing a lot of symbolic work.) The title's crucifixion reference frames Andy as both a Christ figure and a comically self-martyring figure, and Buoro has an assured grasp of religious and coming-of-age themes.
A promising debut that upends the typical bildungsroman.
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"Buoro, Stephen: THE FIVE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES OF ANDY AFRICA." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A740905165/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=364ba790. Accessed 25 June 2024.
Stephen Buoro on his comic novel 'The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa'.
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HOST: CAMILA DOMONOSKE
CAMILA DOMONOSKE: In Stephen Buoro's new darkly comic novel, a Nigerian teenager named Andy dreams about his father.
STEPHEN BUORO: (Reading) Maybe I'm like Papa. I really want to know who the hell he is - his dusty feet, his booming voice, his grip on my shoulder.
DOMONOSKE: The 15-year-old doesn't know his father. It's a secret his mother keeps from him. The secret he keeps from her, a secret that's very obvious to his two best friends? That Andy dreams of white women - blondes, to be precise.
BUORO: (Reading) A Marilyn Monroe, who has never had mosquitoes sink in her ears and suck her blood, leaving red swellings as they fly away. A Princess Diana, who has never woken up at midnight with hunger. A Taylor Swift, who has never experienced a blackout.
DOMONOSKE: That, of course, is Stephen Buoro, reading from his debut novel "The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa." Stephen, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.
BUORO: Thank you so much for having me.
DOMONOSKE: Now, your book, the excerpt you just read - it's all in the voice of Andy. His nickname is Andy Africa. How did he get that nickname?
BUORO: So it's, like, a school assembly, and he makes some anti-African comments. And his teacher, like, punishes him by, like, giving him that nickname.
DOMONOSKE: Yeah. Yeah. He hates being called Andy Africa for - I mean, is it some of the same reasons why he's, in some cases, really angry about living in Africa?
BUORO: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yes.
DOMONOSKE: I want to also ask a question about the very beginning of this book. The first words of the book are, dear white people. Why did you start like that?
BUORO: Yeah. The novel is just more about Andrew trying to confess his obsession for whiteness - I mean, for blonde women and all that. And for me, confession is a very powerful, powerful process - right? - because, I mean, it contains acceptance, courage and all that. And it also demonstrates vulnerability. And I come from a very strong Catholic background. And confession is a very big sacrament, actually, in the Catholic Church. And it just seemed very important, actually, for Andy to address this whiteness, these white people who have colonized him, who have forced all his ideas on him.
DOMONOSKE: Yeah. Right. And he has this concept that he's come up with to help explain what to him is one of the mysteries in the book, which is why is his life - why is Africa the way that it is? HXVX. Can you explain that and tell us where you got that idea from?
BUORO: Andy often sees the huge problems that contemporary Africa experiences, Nigeria in particular. They're just so huge. It feels as if it's like a super force or something, like a kind of god or something or maybe a supervillain, actually, that is actually, like, trying to do awesome things and watching his own situation and all that. And the name for God in - of course, in the Old Testament, in the Bible, YHWH. So Andy decides to adopt that and to call, like, the issues, the different issues plaguing Africa as the constructs which he calls HXVX. Yeah. So it's all of these issues involving, like, issues like slavery, colonialism, plutocracy, the collapse of Indigenous governments and all that.
DOMONOSKE: Well, does it work? Does having this HXVX idea, this HXVX - does it make his life make more sense to him?
BUORO: I think it does. I think it does because in the novel now, Andy uses different, like, tools - right? - different devices, I mean, from, like, mathematics - because he loves maths - and then poetry and then science fiction - I mean, all these ideas about superheroes in the book and religion to unravel himself for the reader.
DOMONOSKE: Right. Andy loves his mother, and he is so profoundly ashamed of her and not just in, like, teenage boys are always embarrassed by their mother way, right? Like, he also feels that she is too Black, that she's not educated enough. He comments on the way that she smells sometimes. But then also, you know, he loves the way that she smells other times. It's complicated.
BUORO: Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, he's been fed all this stuff from Hollywood. I mean, Hollywood is so influential on - like, in helping teenagers, like, define their sense of self, the standards of beauty and what's - like, what are the ideals, anyway? Yeah. So that's a feeling of shame. And, I mean, about her Blackness - and she's this very Black woman and - whom he's supposed to be proud of. And he actually admits that - right? - that he should appreciate her more in that sense, and - but he doesn't due to, like, all that has been fed to him as standards of beauty and all that. Yeah.
DOMONOSKE: You grew up in northern Nigeria in the same area that Andy did, right?
BUORO: Exactly. Yes.
DOMONOSKE: And now you live in England?
BUORO: Yeah. Correct.
DOMONOSKE: Yeah. Can I ask a personal question? How did you transition between those two different realities?
BUORO: Yeah, I mean, I've still not transitioned. And they're two very powerful, starkly different realities. I mean, I remember, for example, my very first week in the U.K. and how everything was incredibly strange. I mean, for example, I couldn't just look outside my window. I had to, like, pull my curtains tight. I mean, I closed my curtains for, like, the very first weekend just to be able to, like, process the incredible change and to begin to accept my new surroundings anyway. And thankfully, I think I've made some good progress so far. So yeah.
DOMONOSKE: The voice, the narration of your book is very funny, and it's fun. And Andy is such a teenage boy. And then the events that happen - there are different permutations of horrific violence. And they're almost in the background. Like, these terrible things happen, and then the narrative moves on, it seems, quite quickly. Can you talk about why you did that, how you handled the pervasive violence in this book?
BUORO: Yeah, this theme of violence is a very, very strong post-colonial theme, right? In terms of the novel, I - like, Andy and even myself when I was growing up in Nigeria - we get to a stage where we become, like, desensitized to this violence, right? And then we just seem to move on as a form of, like, psychological defense mechanism or whatever, as just a way of coming to terms with these things and dealing with them. So what I wanted to do was to put a reader in that position of what it means to be a 15-year-old boy growing up in Nigeria. Like, everything about the whole experience - I mean, from the violence to issues that teens deal with, not just in Nigeria but worldwide anyway, the sex, the anger, the angst and all that. So, I mean, I was trying to...
DOMONOSKE: The drama. The friend drama.
BUORO: Yeah. So I also wanted to depict all these things as much as I could do in a very engaging way and all that. Yeah.
DOMONOSKE: It was so engaging and so fun and also so heartbreaking. And...
BUORO: Thank you so much. Thank you.
DOMONOSKE: Stephen Buoro - his novel is "The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa." Thank you so much for being with us today.
BUORO: Well, thank you so much for having me.
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"Stephen Buoro on his comic novel 'The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa'." Weekend Edition Sunday, 23 Apr. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A746707978/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=05bc5fe8. Accessed 25 June 2024.
QUOTED: "Buoro ... deftly blends low-brow humor with sophisticated religious and literary references, elevating this highly anticipated novel."
Buoro, Stephen. The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa. Bloomsbury. Apr. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9781635577778. $28. F
DEBUT Andrew Aziza, a 15-year-old Nigerian math prodigy, prize-winning poet, altar boy who doubts God's existence, and sexually naive virgin obsessed with blondes, narrates this irreverent coming-of-age story from Nigerian-born, UK-based debut author Buoro. Like any teen, Andy switches from exaggerated eye roll to thoughtful introspection on a dime. His jaunty banter with friends Slim, Morocca, and Fatima belies the insecurity of a boy whose father—and hence his origin—is unknown, an omission for which he resents his mother. Disillusionment runs deep in Nigeria's youth, with poverty and unemployment making the dangerous crossing to Europe look enticing. So when British priest Father McMahan, who for 30 years has created a robust church presence in this majority Muslim region, invites his teenage niece Eileen to visit, is it any wonder that Andy tumbles for this blonde goddess who represents all that he aspires to? Eileen's reception is well underway when word arrives that a misunderstanding in the Muslim community has spawned unrest in town. Violence escalates, the church burns, a mob attacks parishioners, and Andy's youthful dreaminess hits a wall of stark reality.
VERDICT: Buoro, a Booker Foundation Scholarship recipient, deftly blends low-brow humor with sophisticated religious and literary references, elevating this highly anticipated novel to a poignant lament for a country and its children.—Sally Bissell
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Bissell, Sally. "The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa." WebOnlyReviewsLJ, vol. 148, no. 4, 21 Apr. 2023, p. 1. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A748697717/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e5468ca0. Accessed 25 June 2024.