Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: After the Flare
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://returnofthedeji.com/revamp/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2014047300 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2014047300 |
| HEADING: | Olukotun, Deji Bryce |
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| 100 | 1_ |a Olukotun, Deji Bryce |
| 370 | __ |c United States |
| 375 | __ |a male |
| 377 | __ |a eng |
| 400 | 1_ |a Olukotun, Deji |
| 670 | __ |a His Nigerians in space, [2014:] |b t.p. (Deji Bryce Olukotun) page 295 (Deji Bryce Olukotun graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, and also holds degrees from Yale College and Stanford Law School. He became the inaugural Ford Foundation Freedom to Write Fellow at PEN American Center, a human rights organization that promotes literature and defends free expression. His work has been published in Guernica, Joyland, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Molussus, The London Magazine, Men’s Health, Litnet, and international law journals. A passionate soccer fan, he grew up in Hopewell, New Jersey) |
| 670 | __ |a His Everyone comes from Belterra: when America owned the Amazon, 2009: |b t.p. (Deji Olukotun) |
| 667 | __ |a Has published nonfiction works under the name Deji Olukotun |
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Yale University, B.A., 2000; Stanford University, J.D., 2004; University of Cape Town, M.Phil., 2006.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Lollygig LLC, Lambertville, NJ, general counsel, 2010-13; Access Now, New York City, senior global advocacy manager, 2014-17; Sonos, Inc. (audio technology company), New York City, head of social impact, 2017–. PEN America, Ford Foundation Freedom to Write fellow, founder of digital freedom program, and manager of projects for Haiti, Myanmar, Nigeria, and South Africa, between 2011 and 2014; New America, fellow with Future Tense, 2017–.
AVOCATIONS:Soccer.
AWARDS:Ford Foundation fellow.
WRITINGS
Work represented in anthologies, including Watchlist: 32 Short Stories by Persons of Interest, edited by Bryan Hurt, Catapult, 2016; and Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Literature, Tahyon, 2016. Contributor of articles and stories to periodicals, including Atlantic, Electric Literature, Guernica, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Quartz, Slate, Vice, Words without Borders, and World Literature Today; also nonfiction author under the name Deji Olukotun.
SIDELIGHTS
Deji Bryce Olukotun is an American lawyer with a global agenda. He is an advocate for an open Internet, cyber security, and fundamental human rights. Although he was raised in Hopewell, New Jersey, his commitment has taken him around the world. He has organized international campaigns involving participants from ninety countries. At Sonos, he spearheaded corporate advocacy for social issues related to music culture.
Olukotun earned a creative writing degree from the University of Cape Town, and he worked at writers’ centers in Haiti, Myanmar, and Nigeria. All of these efforts fed his own creativity. “I had been fortunate enough to have visited or lived in almost all the places I wrote about,” he told an interviewer on the Brittle Paper website. Olukotun gained additional insight from his own background as the son of a Nigerian father who works in the biotechnology industry.
Nigerians in Space
Nigerians in Space is a crime thriller that flirts with science fiction and fantasy. Olukotun began with the concept of the Nigerian “brain drain” of the 1980s, which lured enterprising young men to seek their fortunes in Europe and America. He introduces a tech-savvy politician who conceives of a “brain gain” to bring them back home with the fruits of their labors. Bello, who is also a spellbinding Yoruba praise singer, wants to create a space program that will plant the Nigerian flag on the moon.
In 1993 lunar geologist Dr. Wale Olufunmi takes the bait. To prove his commitment to the project, he steals a piece of moon rock from his laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, gathers up his wife and son Dayo, and sets off to join the dream team. When Bello fails to meet him, Wale flees to Sweden, and eventually to South Africa, where his dream crumbles to dust. At the same time, Melissa Tebogo, the teenage daughter of a South African freedom fighter, is on her way to Paris at Bello’s expense to be treated for a luminous skin disorder that puts her life at risk from ancient tribal cultures. Instead Melissa is waylaid at the airport and disappears from sight.
Twenty years later, Wale is reduced to selling furniture in Cape Town. His son Dayo is a grown man obsessed with snow globes that glow with the light of the moon. Melissa is a global sensation in the fashion industry. The skin condition that could have made her a victim of tribal superstition has made her rich. A young South African abalone poacher named Thursday Malaysius finds himself in trouble with Chinese mobsters, the police, and a host of other unsavory characters. Bello is revealed as the puppet of an evil faction connected to the mystical relationship between the Yoruba ibeji, or sacred twins. Tade Ipadeola explained in the Guardian Nigeria Online: “Mirrored in our national psyche is a very evil twin that thwarts every dream that the good twin conjures.” Everyone is connected, no one is safe, and the danger is mounting.
Readers described Nigerians in Space as a story that could only happen in Nigeria, and Nigerian critics in particular appreciated it. “The plot is schizophrenic–and delightfully so,” commented the Brittle Paper website interviewer, but eventually, “individuals, spaces, narrative threats, and even objects come together to form a rather captivating narrative collage.” Olukotun responded: “I wanted to tackle African stereotypes” and “I’m really proud to have written a novel that features African protagonists.”
Ipadeola referred to Nigerians in Space as a “speculative novel that is also psychological and genealogical and noir and sociological and staggeringly international … a pioneering effort.” He elaborated: “There is a Nigeria that is all-dream and palpable and present. But that Nigeria is also riven and unstructured. There is another mirror-Nigeria that is … a stable of nightmares. That other Nigeria is however structured, united and determined.” He summarized: “Olukotun’s insight is precious and worth all discourses that may be directed at it.” A writer on the AustCrime website called the volume “a very smooth, slightly mad debut novel which bodes particularly well for future outings.”
After the Flare
After the Flare moves firmly into science-fiction territory. Nigerians have not yet ventured into space, but the fledgling space station limps along. When a devastating solar flare penetrates the earth’s atmosphere, it destroys almost every electrical power grid on the planet and disables electronic control of objects in space. Satellites are crashing to earth, and the only astronaut left on the International Space Station is running out of essential supplies. The only functional space station on earth is in Nigeria.
African-American engineer Kwesi Bracket moves to Nigeria to oversee part of an emergency rescue mission, but his efforts are stymied at every turn. He faces a daunting learning curve as he navigates technical difficulties, cultural differences, shady political bureaucrats, and tribal interference. His project is threatened by supply chain delays and feuding groups of violent tribal women wielding “song stones,” not to mention an advancing terrorist cell of Boko Haram.
Then Bracket discovers a mysterious artifact linked to an ancient culture thought to be extinct. A sonic scan detects a massive living creature prowling beneath the launch pad, and Bracket is nearly killed by an alien creature with electrically charged skin. On the International Space Station, a lone astronaut is running out of time, and so is Kwesi Bracket.
“Olukotun manages these complex threads of story with a wily grace,” observed a contributor to Kirkus Reviews. Gary K. Wolfe reported in Locus that Olukotun “keeps the action moving at a rapid, almost-non-stop pace.” In contrast, a reviewer in Publishers Weekly reported that the author’s “uneven” attempt “cannot quite support the novel’s wide ambitions.” In general, however, comments resembled those of James Lovegrove, who wrote in the Financial Times Online that Olukotun “excels in extrapolating … African culture and tradition into future technology.” Tim Chamberlain noted on the KAZI Book Review with Hopeton Hay website that he found special pleasure in “the little asides on life and culture that weave a fascinating picture of Nigeria as it exists now, and how it would evolve.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2017, review of After the Flare.
Publishers Weekly, July 10, 2017, review of After the Flare, p. 62.
ONLINE
Access Now Website, https://www.accessnow.org/ (May 12, 2018), author profile.
AustCrime, http://www.austcrimefiction.org/ (July 9, 2013), review of Nigerians in Space.
Brittle Paper, https://brittlepaper.com/ (August 4, 2014), author interview.
Brooklyn Paper Online, https://www.brooklynpaper.com/ (March 4, 2014), Samantha Lim, author interview.
Deji Bryce Olukotun Website, https://returnofthedeji.com (May 12, 2018).
Financial Times Online, https://www.ft.com/ (November 3, 2017), James Lovegrove, review of After the Flare.
Guardian Nigeria Online, http://guardian.ng/ (May 10, 2015), Tade Ipadeola, review of Nigerians in Space.
James Murua’s Literature Blog, http://www.jamesmurua.com/ (May 23, 2014), James Murua, review of Nigerians in Space.
KAZI Book Review with Hopeton Hay, https://kazibookreview.wordpress.com/ (September 16, 2017), Tim Chamberlain, review of After the Flare.
Locus, http://locusmag.com/ (September 25, 2017), Gary K. Wolfe, review of After the Flare.
Lush, https://uk.lush.com/ (May 12, 2018), author interview.
New America, https://www.newamerica.org/ (May 12, 2018), author profile.
Yale Macmillan Center Website, https://ala2017.macmillan.yale.edu/ (May 12, 2018), author profile.
Deji Olukotun
Head of Social Impact at Sonos
Greater New York City Area
Sonos, Inc. Stanford University Law School See contact info See contact info
See connections (500+) 500+ connections
I'm an attorney and advocate with a background in digital technologies and human rights -- what are sometimes called "digital rights."? This includes advocacy and policy development on issues such as internet shutdowns, artificial intelligence, net neutrality, cybersecurity, the internet of things, and online ...
Experience
* Sonos
Head of Social Impact
Company Name Sonos, Inc.
Dates Employed Oct 2017 – Present
Employment Duration 8 mos
Lead Sonos's global program on social impact in support of music and free expression in the digital age.
- corporate giving, including establishing a cutting-edge platform
- set corporate strategy and objectives on free expression, privacy, and governance
- spearhead corporate advocacy, including using Sonos's brand voice to raise awareness about social issues
- lead technology policy engagement to establish Sonos as a global leader on issues such as music culture, human rights, and artificial intelligence
Future Tense Fellow
Company Name New America
Dates Employed Jul 2017 – Present
Employment Duration 11 mos
Location Washington D.C. Metro Area
I am a fellow at Future Tense, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Slate, Arizona State University, and the New America Foundation that explores the frontiers of science, art, and policy.
* Access Now
Senior Global Advocacy Manager
Company Name Access Now
Dates Employed Nov 2014 – Oct 2017
Employment Duration 3 yrs
Location New York
Develop and lead international advocacy campaigns for this tech rights organization, including successes such as:
• Founded #KeepitOn campaign to fight internet shutdowns (130 organizations from 56 countries), leading to UN condemnation of internet shutdowns
• Reinstatement of Politwoops, a tool that tracks Tweets deleted by politicians, by negotiating with Twitter public policy team
• Amibeingtracked.com, which challenged Verizon's use of supercookies, leading to $1.4 million fine at the FCC
• #NotoSocialMediaBill, to kill bill criminalizing use of social media in Nigeria
In addition: Established a £200,000 digital rights fund through a partnership with Lush Cosmetics by creating a bath product sold in 1,000 stores and 40 countries
• Policy guidance on free expression, cybersecurity, net neutrality, privacy, and internet governance
• Content lead on op-eds, social media, and CRM mailers with media coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and The Guardian
• Speaking appearances at major conferences such as the UN Internet Governance Forum, MozFest, RightsCon, HOPE, Lush Summit, Internet Freedom Festival, the Brookings Institution, Global Fund for Media Development, and others
• Communications lead for RightsCon, Access Now's international conference with 1,500 participants from 90 countries
* PEN America
Digital Freedom and Global PEN Center Development
Company Name PEN American Center
Dates Employed 2011 – 2014
Employment Duration 3 yrs
Location Greater New York City Area
• Founded PEN's digital freedom policy to protect threatened writers, bloggers, and activists around the globe, approved by 20,000 writers in over 100 countries
• Led strategy, managed projects, and secured grants for PEN Centers in Myanmar, Haiti, South Africa, and Nigeria
• Secured PEN's admission to Global Network Initiative, a multistakeholder body with Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and other ICT companies and NGOs
• Led advocacy before the UN and intergovernmental bodies, including briefs to Human Rights Council
* Lollygig LLC
General Counsel
Company Name Lollygig LLC
Dates Employed 2010 – 2013
Employment Duration 3 yrs
Location Lambertville, NJ
• Contract negotiation, intellectual property law (copyright, trademark), NDAs, and risk management for design incubator, which develops 3D printing products and software
Education
* Stanford University Law School
Degree Name J.D.
Dates attended or expected graduation 2001 – 2004
Activities and Societies: Stanford Environmental Law Journal
Stanford Law School Class of 2002 Fellow in Conflict Resolution
*
Yale University
Degree Name BA
Dates attended or expected graduation 1996 – 2000
* University of Cape Town
Degree Name Mphil
Field Of Study Justice & Transformation
Dates attended or expected graduation 2005 – 2006
Accomplishments
Deji has 3 certifications 3
Certifications
* New York Bar
* New Jersey Bar
* California Bar
Deji has 2 languages 2
Languages
* French
* Portuguese
Deji Bryce Olukotun is the author of Nigerians in Space. His work has been featured in Vice, Slate, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Atlantic, Guernica, The Millions, World Literature Today, ESPN, and elsewhere. After the Flare is the second novel in the Nigerians in Space series.
As a member of the advocacy team, Deji Bryce Olukotun (email: deji@accessnow.org) manages Access Now's global campaigns on fighting internet shutdowns, the open internet, cybersecurity, and ensuring that our fundamental rights are respected online. He came from the literary and human rights organization PEN American Center, where he founded PEN's digital freedom program and managed its capacity-building work in Myanmar, South Africa, Haiti, and Nigeria. He holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, a BA from Yale University, and dual masters degrees in Creative Writing and Justice & Transformation from the University of Cape Town, where he was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. He has also worked as corporate counsel for a small technology startup. An avid writer, Deji is the author of the novel Nigerians in Space (Unnamed Press) and After the Flare (forthcoming, 2017). His work has been featured in The Atlantic, NPR, The New York Times, and Vice.
Deji Bryce Olukotun
Fellow, Future Tense
Deji Bryce Olukotun is a fellow with Future Tense. He is a digital rights advocate and fiction writer. His novel After the Flare, a dystopian thriller set in the United States and Nigeria, will be published by Unnamed Press in September 2017. Brittle Paper called his first book Nigerians in Space "so much a novel of our time that it helps us track how far we’ve come from mid-century African novels." He works at the digital rights organization Access Now, where he drives campaigns on fighting internet shutdowns, cybersecurity, and online censorship. Before that, he fought for free expression and the defense of writers around the world at PEN American Center with support from the Ford Foundation. Olukotun graduated from Yale College, Stanford Law School, and the MA in creative writing at the University of Cape Town. His work has been featured in Electric Literature, Quartz, Vice, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, the Atlantic, and Guernica.
Deji Bryce Olukotun is a writer and activist who received his bachelor’s degree from Yale College, a law degree from Stanford Law School, and a master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, where he worked with notable South African writers such as André Brink, Mike Nicol, and Henrietta Rose-Innes.
His recent novel, Nigerians in Space (2014), is a speculative thriller that details the life of a Nigerian immigrant, Dr. Wale Olufunmi, a lunar rock geologist working for NASA. Wale devises a plan to steal a piece of the moon after a Nigerian government official makes an offer to scientists working abroad to return to Nigeria, invest in the nation’s knowledge production, and make Nigeria the center of technology on the African continent. The operation, nicknamed “Brain Gain”, catalyzes complex narrative arcs that interconnect the lives of several people from diverse places, spaces, and times. The sequel to Nigerians in Space, After the Flare, set several years later, imagines the life of an industrial engineer named Kwesi Bracket who loses his job at NASA after a catastrophic solar flare hits earth. He soon discovers that Nigeria operates the only functioning space program in the world and sets out to help launch a rescue mission to save a stranded astronaut. It will be published in September 2017.
Olukotun’s interest in science and technology stems from his work as an attorney with a background in human rights and technology. He currently fights for an open and secure internet at the organization Access Now. While a Ford Foundation fellow at PEN America, he worked with writer’s centers in South African, Myanmar, and Haiti. Defying easy categorization, Olukotun has published numerous short stories and articles. His piece We Are the Olfanauts, was published in a fiction collection entitled Watchlist: 32 Short Stories by Persons of Interest (OR Books / Catapult Books / Tachyon Books). Olukotun has also contributed to publications such as Electric Literature, Quartz, Vice, Slate, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and World Literature Today.
What’s it like to spend your days fighting for social justice? Deji Bryce Olukotun has spent most of his career doing just that. Here’s a glimpse into his life as not only the senior global advocacy manager at Access Now, but also a published novelist.
How did you get to where you are now?
I've been fighting for social justice most of my career. I'm a lawyer by training and I'm an avid fiction writer - I published a novel called Nigerians in Space, with a sequel coming out in 2017. My most recent social justice work was at PEN America, a literary and human rights organization, where I founded its digital freedom programme and supported writers in Haiti, Myanmar, and Nigeria. I don't see activism and writing as opposed to each other - I strongly believe that creativity can help us imagine our own futures and advance justice in the world.
Why the interest in digital rights? And what led you to Access Now?
We're living in the digital age, when technologies shape our lives in profound ways. I previously worked as a more traditional human rights lawyer, and I learned that the online space was beginning to drastically affect free expression, privacy, and our personal lives. Access Now has been at the forefront of this discussion since its founding in 2009, and offers a free, 24-hour Digital Security Helpline to empower and protect activists and vulnerable people around the world.
What does your role at Access Now involve?
As a member of the advocacy team, I manage Access Now's global campaigns to fight internet shutdowns, protect the open internet, and ensure that our fundamental rights are respected online. This means coordinating with my colleagues - and other organisations - all over the globe, to identify and advance campaigns that support digital rights. This could be anything from running online petitions to meeting with officials at the UN and in legislatures. With #KeepitOn, I work with a coalition of more than 100 organisations to anticipate, track, and develop solutions against internet shutdowns. It's a brilliant group of grassroots activists in nearly 50 countries. And there are many, many extraordinary colleagues at Access Now who are working on fighting internet shutdowns on any given day - we rely on each other and support one another.
What’s your proudest achievement with Access Now?
I feel tremendously lucky to work with such talented colleagues from so many cultures, so I'm excited to go to work most days. In 2014, we learned that the telecommunications company Verizon was tracking the browsing habits of mobile users in an insecure and creepy way with "supercookies." Our tech team quickly built a tool to allow people to test whether their own phones were being tracked, and we discovered that it wasn't just a U.S. problem - it was happening all over the world. More than 300,000 people tried our test on their phones. Our work led to major media coverage from India to Spain and Holland about this practice. And in the U.S. - thanks to our efforts and the efforts of other great organizations like Pro Publica and EFF - Verizon was fined by the Federal Trade Commission for $1.35 million for violating the privacy of its users.
Have you ever personally experienced an internet shutdown?
Thankfully, I haven't. I am usually on the other side -- trying to communicate with users at risk and journalists who suddenly find themselves plunged into darkness. Shutdowns are awful, instantly cutting you off from family and friends. What’s inspiring is how resilient and inventive people are during shutdowns -- they come up with creative ways to get the information out. But anyone understands the frustration of the internet not working when you need it most. Now imagine all that, while human rights atrocities are happening around you.
What can people do to get involved in the fight against internet shutdowns?
Digital rights are human rights. They are indivisible and inalienable. You can take action at https://accessnow.org to pressure world leaders to commit to keeping it on.
What are your fears for the future of digital rights?
Digital technologies have empowered people with incredible new communications tools that allow them to hold the powerful to account - and to innovate. My fear is that these technologies will be eviscerated through a combination of governments censoring what we say and do online; leaders waging cyber wars across borders; criminals exploiting vulnerabilities in code; and corporations advocating for policies that trample on our privacy and our free will, turning us into predictable automatons who can't think for ourselves. That's why I'm thrilled that organisations like Access Now - and many others - exist to protect our human rights. They need our support, and we're thrilled Lush has joined us in the fight.
DEJI BRYCE OLUKOTUN is the author of two novels and his fiction has appeared in three different book collections. His novel Nigerians in Space, a thriller about brain drain from Africa, was published by Unnamed Press in 2014. The sequel to Nigerians in Space, After the Flare, was published in September 2017 and chosen as one of the best books of 2017 by The Guardian, The Washington Post, Syfy.com, Tor.com, Kirkus Reviews, among others. He is currently the Head of Social Impact at the audio technology company Sonos and a Future Tense Fellow at New America.
Forthcoming in 2017
• The short story The Levellers will be published in the collection Dystopia, by O/R Books.
• The essay Equity in Space will be published in the collection Space Futures, by the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State and NASA.
Previous work
Deji graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town. He also holds degrees from Yale University and Stanford Law School.
His short story We Are the Olfanauts was published in the fiction collection Watchlist: 32 Short Stories by Persons of Interest in 2015 (O/R Books) and in 2016 (Catapult Books). His work is also featured in the 2016 science fiction collection Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Literature (Tachyon) alongside authors Junot Diaz and Emily St. John Mandel.
Deji’s work has been featured in Electric Literature, Quartz, Vice, Slate, GigaOm, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Atlantic, Guernica, The Millions, World Literature Today, ESPN, Chimurenga, Global Voices, Joyland, Words Without Borders, Alternet, Huffington Post, PEN America, The London Magazine, Molussus, and Men’s Health. He has served as a juror for the Neustadt Festival of International Literature and for the Art and Olfaction contest, a global perfumery competition. In 2014, he was an artist-in-residence at the Ace Hotel in New York.
Deji is an attorney with a background in human rights and technology. He has traveled to over 25 countries and offers deep work experience in South Africa, Myanmar, and Haiti. He is currently the Head of Social Impact at the audio technology company Sonos. Before that he drove global campaigns to keep the internet open and free at Access Now, and worked at PEN American Center in the defense of writers around the world, with support from the Ford Foundation.
Deji writes because he has to.
March 4, 2014 / GO Brooklyn / Park Slope / Books
‘NIGERIANS IN SPACE’ BY DEJI OLUKOTUN
Spaced out: P’Slope author writes crime thriller about Nigerian space program
BY SAMANTHA LIM
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Space man: Park Slope author Deji Olukotun with his new novel, “Nigerians in Space.”
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When Deji Olukotun combined his two careers of law and literature, he came up with a crime thriller that is out of this world.
The Park Slope resident, now a writing fellow at the PEN American Center, was working as a refugee attorney in Cape Town, South Africa, when inspiration for his new novel, “Nigerians in Space,” struck.
The book tells the story of Nigerian lunar geologist who wants to steal part of the moon, an abalone smuggler, and the daughter of a freedom fighter, unravelling the mystery of how their lives and stories intersect. We caught up with Olukotun to find out how he dreamed up such a fantastical scenario from his office in Brooklyn.
Samantha Lim: How did working as a refugee attorney in Cape Town inspire your novel?
Deji Olukotun: Two of the characters are refugees living in the country, because that’s what I was doing for work.
SL: The book features a very colorful set of characters including an abalone smuggler. Is this based off a real black market in South Africa?
DO: Yeah! It’s a huge black market. I was researching crimes against refugees and came across this paper about abalone smuggling near Cape Town. It was so detailed and so rich. If you’re living in a little fishing village, it’s really hard to make a living. But if you get your hands on abalone, you can sell it for a lot of money … People also raise abalone in farms like with salmon farming. What I wanted to explore is, “What if you were really good at your job in one of these farms and you got fired? And you knew that a hundred yards away, you could walk into the water and make a lot of money?”
SL: Explain the concept of “brain gain” that is addressed in the book?
DO: Someone mentioned it during a trip to Nigeria with my father and my brother. The idea is to take advantage of Nigeria’s diaspora community and have them bring back what they learn. “Brain drain” is basically the exodus of talent from Africa — people who are seeking better opportunities by going to Europe and the US. The person who brought up the idea of “brain gain” — clever word play, which I thought was very funny — said it kind of cynically, but also implied that we should take advantage of what our countrymen have picked up overseas. That informs a big chunk of my novel’s plot. This government minister in Nigeria invites a bunch of diaspora scientists to return to form a new space program.
SL: Is this where the mission to steal part of the moon comes in?
DO: Yes! It’s the most thriller part of the book. I don’t want to give too much away, but the idea is that he wants to see an act of commitment from everyone to show that they’re more than just happy to be there — that they’re actually invested in the program.
“Nigerians in Space” is available at Word Bookstore [126 Franklin St. at Milton Street in Greenpoint, (718) 383–0096, www.wordbookstores.com].
Posted 12:00 am, March 4, 2014
2014/08/04
Space-traveling Nigerians | Interview with Deji Olukotun
Deji Olukotun’s novel, Nigerians in Space, is one of the most entertaining novel about Africa to come out this year. It’s a quirky, multi-city, fast-paced noir fiction piece about a Nigerian lunar geologist who dreams of leading a Nigerian space mission. But as with all things Nigerian, things get a little more complicated than he imagined.
After I read the novel, I knew I was going to review it {HERE}, but I also wanted to chat with Deji, get inside his head, try to understand how he created this richly textured and fascinating fictional world of space-traveling Nigerians.
Enjoy!
nigerians-in-spaceWhy did you seek out writing as a vocation?
I’ve written stories for as long as I can remember. When I was very young, I used to write my own fables in imitation of Aesop. Each one had a moral at the end—that was my favorite part. I continued to write through high school and college, but I was often frustrated that I could not express what I wanted on the page. Once I enrolled at the University of Cape Town in the MA program in creative writing, my teachers gave me the tools to write what I wanted and I haven’t stopped since. It’s a wonderful feeling.
What was the inspiration for Nigerians in Space—the “a-ha!” moment?
Well, there are two main plotlines in the story. The inspiration for the character Thursday Malaysius, who is involved in the illicit abalone trade, emerged from my human rights research. I came across a paper at the International Security Studies office and I thought it would be fascinating to explore this trade in which poachers from small fishing villages are able to make a living in a business that stretches all the way to East Asia. So I traveled to one of those towns and spoke to factory workers and prosecutors. The idea of a Nigerian lunar geologist came out of a question—what would the world be like at night if all our streetlamps produced moonlight? I worked backwards from there.
You said in an interview that while you like reading “purely literary” fiction, you prefer to write plot-driven narratives. And Nigerians in Space is very much in the noir category. <
I admire literary fiction—which is a broad category—because of its ability to experiment with form, time, and especially character. You can read about the life of a character in a day and, if done right, it can be compelling and daring in a way that genre fiction cannot. You’ll see that I reference Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in the book. I actually had a few pages devoted to To the Lighthouse, but I had to cut it for editorial reasons. I read To the Lighthouse in high school and it blew my mind—here was a true master of language and craft telling a story in an original way.
I grew up in a family of storytellers, so I always loved hearing a good yarn. But more specifically, my professor at UCT was Mike Nicol, and he was in the midst of writing his dazzling Revenge Trilogy, a hard-boiled noir story set in and around Cape Town. His passion for the genre made me focus on plotting, and this made it possible for the different threads to come together. It was maddening at times to keep track of all the little details, but I’m glad you liked it!
Lauren Beukes is South African and writes a novel set in Chicago with American characters. Chris Abani is Nigerian and writes a novel deji-olukotun-nigerians-in-spaceset in Las Vegas with a South African character. You’ve written this novel with characters from all over Africa and set in Houston, Cape Town, Basel, Paris, Abuja. Why do you think African writers are now so interested in stories that take place elsewhere?
I think it’s great that African writers are writing about the world as they see it or as they imagine it to be. There are plenty of stories of people from other countries writing about Africa, often in an exploitative way, so it’s great that the publishing industry is willing to celebrate African voices writing about non-African cultures. For my part, <> in the book. This made it easier for me to write about them.
Nigerians and 419 scam. Nigerians and corruption. Nigerians and Boko Haram. Nigerians and…well, you name it. But Nigerians and space? In other words, your novel is about two things—Nigerians and space travel—that not many people link together. Was it challenging getting someone to publish it?
It was important for me to find a literary agent who believed in me, Gary Heidt. From the very beginning he understood exactly what I was trying to do—tell a non-stereotypical story with African protagonists that was plot driven. We actually had almost 10 offers immediately after we sent the story around. It was fascinating: literally 10 times the associate editors brought it to the editorial room because they were excited about it. But their colleagues shot it down at that phase. I don’t know why that happened, only that it was heartbreaking to get that close so many times. In the end, I was fortunate to connect with Unnamed Press. Their team is top-notch, all former editors and publishers, and they have gotten completely behind the story.
In the character, Bello, you do something strange with the figure of the praise singer. I’d never have thought of the Yoruba figure of the praise singer as a kind of spellbinder, a dream weaver, a quasi-conman, someone who has the power to transform language into something bewitching.
His character was inspired in part by Wole Soyinka’s play Death and the King’s Horseman, which explores the notion of the praise singer in brilliant fashion. With Bello, I was seeing what would happen if you had someone who was completely versed in the language of the West—public relations, marketing, and advertising—and combined these skills with a traditional role. The praise singer is at once a musician and politician, a sort of bridge, if you will, linking together generations of royalty in Yoruba culture. More than that, Bello dares to dream, to imagine a better future for Nigerians than the politicians he must serve.
© Beowulf Sheehan
© Beowulf Sheehan
Melissa’s skin! To be honest, I was a bit bothered by how much I was both creeped out by and attracted to her body. What idea of feminine beauty is implicit in her strange body?
Melissa came out of a number of strange experiences. Cape Town is a major stop on the global fashion circuit, and a close friend of mine—who is also a writer—was a fashion model at the time. (There were very few fashion models of color in Cape Town, incidentally.) With Melissa, I wondered: if black is beautiful, what happens if you’re not black enough? And in Africa, the absence of color—or being albino—can lead to a death sentence in some cultures. At the same time, Melissa is the daughter of a freedom fighter who helps with the South African liberation movement, so she has a public role. I like the idea that your greatest weakness can become your strength and this is her trajectory. Nnedi Okorofor also wrote about albinism in her stories, but I didn’t know that until well after I’d finished my book.
What do you love about your novel, Nigerians in Space?
<
Above all, I’d love for readers to enjoy the ride. Go spear-fishing with Thursday as he hunts for abalone; walk the catwalk with Melissa; and follow Wale as he pieces together the crimes. This a story after all.
What is your day job?
I’m a lawyer by training and I’m privileged to be able to work with writers every day at PEN American Center. I founded our digital freedom program, which protects writers around the world who are persecuted for using digital technologies—going to jail for writing a poem on Facebook or Twitter, for example. And I work closely with PEN Centers in South Africa, Haiti, Myanmar, and, yes, Nigeria. It has been an amazing ride but believe it or not, not very good for my writing. I’m overwhelmed by books and I don’t have much time for my own work. Could be worse, though!
Deji Olukotun
Author
Deji Bryce Olukotun graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, and also holds degrees from Yale College and Stanford Law School. He became the inaugural Ford Foundation Freedom to Write Fellow at PEN American Center, a human rights organization that promotes literature and defends free expression. His work has been published in Guernica, Joyland, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Molussus, The London Magazine, Men’s Health, Litnet, and international law journals. A passionate soccer fan, he grew up in Hopewell, New Jersey.
Olukotun, Deji Bryce: AFTER THE FLARE
Kirkus Reviews. (Aug. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
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Full Text:
Olukotun, Deji Bryce AFTER THE FLARE Unnamed Press (Adult Fiction) $16.00 9, 12 ISBN: 978-1-944700-18-8
In a deceptively slim novel, Olukotun (Nigerians in Space, 2014) orchestrates a complex dystopian story about what happens when a massive solar flare damages electrical systems worldwide and leaves Nigeria with the only functioning space program on the planet.When the solar flare envelops the Earth, it also cripples the equipment on the International Space Station, stranding one astronaut with limited supplies and setting the station up to eventually fall out of orbit and crash into Mumbai. A few months later, Kwesi Bracket, an American engineer freshly unemployed from NASA, accepts an invitation to join the rescue effort in Nigeria, one of the few places left untouched by the flare and the only country currently capable of building a functioning spaceship. Bracket directs the construction of a massive simulation pool, balancing his duties as a scientist with the need to appease the whims of the charismatic politician who supports the space program and the volatile traders from whom he acquires supplies. He soon finds himself caught in a web of converging threats: political maneuvering, terrorist attacks by Boko Haram, and mysterious powers wielded by a small group of tribal women.<< Olukotun manages these complex threads of story with a wily grace>>, weaving them into a surprising and briskly paced plot while also reveling in an abundance of inventive, vivid detail. In this version of Nigeria, a fascination with tribal identity exists alongside new technological devices that bring together animals and computer technology--geckolike phones, a malicious hacking spider--and a complicated monetary system that combines cowrie shells with block chains. It is a place where industrial development flourishes next to nomadic trading people and where both traditional gender roles and fluid explorations of gender and sexuality exist at the same time. The entire novel is spectacularly imagined, well-written, and a pleasure to read. An absorbing novel that explores a compelling, African-centered future world.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Olukotun, Deji Bryce: AFTER THE FLARE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499572747/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b9b951ea. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499572747
After the Flare
Publishers Weekly. 264.28 (July 10, 2017): p62+.
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Full Text:
After the Flare
Deji Bryce Olukotun. Unnamed (PGW, dist.), $16 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-944700-18-8
Olukotun's <
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"After the Flare." Publishers Weekly, 10 July 2017, p. 62+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499720045/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4e49d85f. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499720045
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Short review: After the Flare by Deji Bryce Olukotun
Nigerian astronauts seek to avert disaster on the International Space Station
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James Lovegrove NOVEMBER 3, 2017 Print this page0
A solar flare strikes the Earth, sending satellites into decaying orbits and leaving a lone astronaut stranded aboard the International Space Station. With infrastructure devastated across most of the developed world, it is left to Nigeria, the only country that still has a functioning space programme, to launch a rescue mission before the ISS hits the atmosphere. But the scourge of Boko Haram rears its head, along with a set of ancient tribal artefacts called Songstones with magical-seeming powers.
A follow up to Olukotun’s Nigerians in Space, After the Flare<< excels in extrapolating>> aspects of<< African culture and tradition into future technology>> (semi-sentient phones that resemble geckos and specially adapted cowrie shells serving as currency). An eloquently written and ambitious novel.
After the Flare, by Deji Bryce Olukotun, Unnamed Press, RRP$16, 264 pages
Gary K. Wolfe Reviews After the Flare by Deji Bryce Olukotun
September 25, 2017 Gary K. Wolfe
After the Flare, by Deji Bryce Olukotun (Unnamed Press 978-1-9447-0018-8, $16.00, 264pp, tp September 2017)
Despite its provocative title, Deji Bryce Olukotun’s first novel Nigerians in Space escaped my attention in 2014, but as it turns out, the Nigerians don’t actually get into space in that novel, which is mostly an international thriller centered around an effort to bring expatriate Nigerian brain power back to the home country (or the ‘‘brain gain,’’ as one character put it). It was apparently only tangentially SF, and I haven’t read it. However, despite carrying over a couple of the same characters and being listed as the second novel in a trilogy, there’s nothing tangential about After the Flare, which works perfectly well as standalone SF. Olukotun, an American attorney and activist whose connections to Africa seem to be largely through his Nigerian father and his MFA from South Africa, begins quite literally with the sort of bang that recalls Neal Stephenson’s blowing up the moon in the first sentence of his Seveneves: an enormous solar flare not only endangers the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, but – followed by a series of cyberattacks – wipes out virtually all the electrical grids and electromagnetic networks on most of the planet, leaving only a few nations near the equator with functioning infrastructures. A year later, it falls to the nascent Nigerian space program to mount a mission to save the one remaining survivor of the space station, a Ukrainian astronaut, before her supplies of air and food run out. The central character, Kwesi Bracket, is hired to engineer the giant water-filled simulation tank for the astronauts to train in before the mission can be completed. Not too surprisingly, he faces not only technical challenges, but posturing politicians and bureaucrats, shady industrialists, a clueless film crew making a propaganda piece about the project, and the danger of terrorist raids from Boko Haram and an equally violent fundamentalist group called the Jarumi.
That alone would seem to be the template for a solid near-future technothriller, with the rescue mission itself recalling elements of Andy Weir’s The Martian or the film Gravity, but Olukotun has a good deal more in mind. Bracket is given a strange artifact with unidentifiable markings, and a worker who steals the artifact promptly disappears in a puddle of blood. Sonic readings intended to measure the stability of the land beneath the launch site reveal the presence of something large and alive moving about underground, and Bracket himself barely survives when his trailer is attacked by an inhuman creature with what seems to be electrified skin. Even his biomechanical ‘‘geckofone’’ (there are also python phones and hummingbird phones) is attacked by a huge biomechanical spider seeking either to destroy it or retrieve its data. Meanwhile, in a second plot line, a group of tribal Wodaabe women, led by a young rape victim named Balewa, are waging their own insurgency against the Jarumi, which has kidnapped many of their children, using apparently magical ‘‘songstones’’ which can be used either as assault weapons or as a way of creating protective force fields. How those ancient, traditional songstones get incorporated into Olukotun’s SF plot is a bit convoluted, and Bracket needs to bring in a crusty old scientist from the first novel – Dr. Wole Olufunme, a kind of Nigerian Professor Challenger – in order to start drawing the threads together.
This is a lot to pack into a relatively short thriller, and it’s to Olukotun’s credit that he <
Gary K. Wolfe is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at Roosevelt University and a reviewer for Locus magazine since 1991. His reviews have been collected in Soundings (BSFA Award 2006; Hugo nominee), Bearings (Hugo nominee 2011), and Sightings (2011), and his Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature (Wesleyan) received the Locus Award in 2012. Earlier books include The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (Eaton Award, 1981), Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever (with Ellen Weil, 2002), and David Lindsay (1982). For the Library of America, he edited American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s in 2012, with a similar set for the 1960s forthcoming. He has received the Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association, the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and a Special World Fantasy Award for criticism. His 24-lecture series How Great Science Fiction Works appeared from The Great Courses in 2016. He has received six Hugo nominations, two for his reviews collections and four for The Coode Street Podcast, which he has co-hosted with Jonathan Strahan for more than 300 episodes. He lives in Chicago.
Review of Deji Bryce Olukotun novel AFTER THE FLARE: “Fascinating Blend of Science Fiction and Fantasy”
September 16, 2017HopetonLeave a commentGo to comments
By Tim Chamberlain
In his latest novel AFTER THE FLARE, Deji Bryce Olukotun delivers a fascinating blend of science fiction and fantasy from a new point of view.
It’s the near future, and massive solar flares have crippled North America, Europe and Asia. Not only does this cause massive disruption on the ground, but all satellites are in danger of crashing, including the manned International Space Station. Nigeria has the only functioning spaceport in the world, and they are scrambling to send a rescue mission to the ISS. Enter our hero, Kwesi Bracket, a displaced American NASA employee thrust into a whole new world in Nigeria.
Fans of plausible, near-future science fiction will enjoy Olukotun’s many inventions which include the Geckophone (a moving, lizard-like phone that can crawl up on
Deji Olukotun Photo © Beowulf Sheehan
the roof to charge in the sun), food-based security (it’s Tuesday, so you have to eat a kola nut and blow through a straw to pass–it’s complicated, and Olukotun does a much better explanation), and the future of currency–cowrie shells. It’s the many little touches like these that make this story vibrant.
But it’s not all just solid science fiction–from the beginning there are mysterious goings-on at the spaceport, and it soon becomes obvious that something beyond science is also somehow involved. Beyond that, the very real members of Boko Haram menace the entire situation, and the terrorists must be dealt with. Olukatun expertly brings all of these various elements together by the end.
The plot of AFTER THE FLARE itself is action movie-worthy, never keeping still for very long. But perhaps the most interesting parts of the book to me were<< the little asides on life and culture that weave a fascinating picture of Nigeria as it exists now, and how it would evolve>> in this solar flare ravaged future. The descriptions of the interactions of different local ethnic groups alone is instructive for someone like me that is mostly unfamiliar with the intricacies of Nigerian culture. Also, the fact that Bracket is American gives Olukotun a very natural way to get into these things–the American needs to know what’s happening.
In the end, AFTER THE FLARE is a seriously satisfying journey through a dystopian future and Nigerian culture that keeps itself grounded with interestingly plausible tech and frighteningly real monsters. Any fans of classic sci-fi should enjoy this new entry that puts things in a setting not typically seen in this genre.
NIGERIANS IN SPACE - DEJI OLUKOTUN
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HideAuthor Information
Author Name:
Deji Olukotun
Author's Home Country:
United States
HidePublication Details
Book Title:
Nigerians in Space
ISBN:
9781939419002
Year of Publication:
2013
Publisher:
Ricochet Books
Publisher Website:
Nigerians in Space - Ricochet Books (link is external)
HideCategories & Groupings
Category:
Crime Fiction
Sub Genre:
Thriller
HideBook Synopsis
"It's time to end the brain drain and move to brain gain. It's time for a great mind of Nigeria to return home. You're the mind we need, Doctor."
1993. Houston. A lunar rock geologist gets an outlandish request: steal a piece of the moon. Dr. Wale Olufunmi has a life most Nigerian immigrants would kill for, but then most Nigerians aren't Wale-a great scientific mind in exile with galactic ambitions. With both personal and national glory at stake, Wale manages to pull off the near impossible, setting out on a journey back to Nigeria that leads anywhere but home.
Nearly twenty years later, in present day South Africa, street kid Thursday Malaysius takes up smuggling something almost as precious-South African abalone-and quickly finds himself in over his head, with the police, the mob, and just about everybody else on his tail.
Compelled by the actions of these two men-and the nosy, troubled young daughter of a South African freedom fighter who has gone missing-Nigerians traces intersecting arcs in time and space from Houston to Stockholm, from Cape Town to Bulawayo, as the lives of Thursday and Wale spiral toward an unlikely collision.
Deji Olukotun's debut novel, "Nigerians in Space," defies categorization-a story of international intrigue that tackles deeper questions about exile, identity, and the need to answer an elusive question: what exactly is brain gain?
HideBook Review
When I said yes to a review copy of NIGERIANS IN SPACE, I will admit that it was partly the title. The opening line of the blurb didn't hurt either. Starting to read it, from about chapter 2 I was totally bamboozled, and firmly hooked. (Although I was mildly disappointed that the piece of the moon stolen was pilfered from a laboratory ... for a while I hoped....)
With a story that quickly moves from the early 90's to the present, this is <>
It could be that part of the story that really works is the idea that there would be a government official orchestrating a brain gain back to Nigeria. A call to arms for Nigerian scientists the world over. Return, use your knowledge and help the land of your birth become the rising technological power of Africa. There's just the minor inconvenience of a little pinched material as your "entrance fee" for want of a better description.
It's hard not to get well into this whole story without the words "Nigerian Scam" rolling in front of your eyes. And it is a very delicious idea, that the ultimate Nigerian Scam might actually be perpetrated by Bello, the Nigerian government official on some of the great Nigerian brains of our time. Especially as the ultimate plan seems to fall to pieces very quickly and the main character - lunar rock geologist Olufunmi, finds himself stranded, with family and a rapidly disappearing brain gain dream.
But the story is not just about Olufunmi. There's also amiable Thursday, who goes from abalone breeder to poacher, and Melissa another victim of Bello. All three storylines do eventually converge in a resolution steeped in African sensibility.
The action moves around a lot in this book, although once it hits South Africa it settles and whilst there is a strong sense of place, it's also the strong cultural setting and feel that really make this an interesting read. Slightly mad definitely, but good mad. In fact it was fascinating all round. Even if the first few chapters might have you wondering what on earth..
Submitted 4 years 9 months ago by Karen.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013 - 8:36pm
Stars Without A Constellation
By Tade Ipadeola
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Beginning in America, where we meet a Nigerian scientist working in NASA and who is already within inches of the glass ceiling which that society sometimes employs to contain the alien star, the author outlines the conditions that may make a beguiling apparition appealing to an otherwise bright mind. The Nigerian scientist is becoming aware of his narrowing options in America. He has an offer almost too good to be true, from Nigeria, to literally live his dreams. He has no reason to doubt the offer because it is coming from home, and your own are not supposed to fail you. He opts to go for the dream.
What follows from the moment the protagonist makes away with the moon rock sample from NASA is the real stuff of nightmares. Everything unravels. But it is the way in which Olukotun describes the unravelling that interests me. The first casualty of Dr. Wale Olufunmi’s error is his own family. Unable to comprehend what Wale is really up to, running from country to country and all the while stating his sole destination as Nigeria, his wife abandons Wale and their son together.
The plot of the novel reveals the involvement of many other Nigerian scientists and engineers in what proves to be a pipe dream. Almost all are done in, some more gruesomely than others. As they fall, the author elicits a startling aspect of the phenomenon he is describing, namely, that the problem isn’t men or money. Indeed, the abundance of talent dazzles. I daresay that a Nigerian who has read the book or who has read this review up to this point can quite easily identify with the author’s luxurious sense of options when it came to Nigerian talent in the diaspora.
The plot takes the reader to Europe where even more Nigerians and Africans are living in various forms of exile. Those involved with the Space Project are bumped off one by one. The protagonist realizes he is in danger and flees to a freshly emancipated South Africa where the story is taken to its denouement. There are a cast of fringe characters in the novel, all of different nationalities, from Americans to Zimbabweans. They illustrate how, in a strange way, Nigeria touches everything.
What the author did with the story is to, in the words of William James, the Harvard psychologist and philosopher, telescope it in a way that compenetrates the implications of Olufunmi’s choices with the actual, non-fictional accounts of life in Nigeria today. In his benchmark book, A Pluralistic Universe, James shows how this is possible and how the logic of this process of telescopy and compenetration plays out. William was the brother of Henry James and I want to hazard a guess that he had ample material for these thoughts from his brother’s life.
There is a sense in which anyone literate in English will be able to understand Olukotun’s book. But there is a reinforced reality in the book for Nigerians in diaspora who are literate in English and who are fortunate enough to read the book. There is another dimension altogether of the book for Nigerians living in the mother-country. The reason for these reinforced sense of things for Nigerians is that the plot penetrates into their daily lives and the hitherto distant details of their lives are brought into sharp relief by Olukotun’s telescope.
Among the things that Deji Olukotun has done, in this novel, is an anatomy of that divide between potential and actuality, promise and fulfilment, responsibility and perplexing irresponsibility. The novel is also a visceral plumbing of the depths of dreams and nightmares and how one sometimes morphs into the other. This novel is also a fine example of the relationship between the nation and the imagination. Olukotun wove these essences into a sprawling, sometimes rambling, story that spans three continents, almost as many decades, while stretching believability at the seams. A problem I have with the narratology is the almost disorienting transitions.
But not all who wander are lost. From the beginning, Olukotun knew what he was after and the reader will come to the same conclusion at the end of the novel. Not many novels with as many scientific characters and noir elements eventually manage to do what Nigerians in Space does: become a metaphor for the failure to evolve a national dream.
The genealogical dimension of the novel describes the life of another generation of Africans after Dr. Wale Olufunmi’s. Among these are the mysterious Melissa, Dayo who is Wale’s son, coloured South African street children, and a literal host of others. One consistent character, also inscrutable, in all the story told is Bello. He is the catalyst for the various actions in the novel. He exists in the story like a dark Melchizedek, without age or time but with unabated power to change lives and shape destinies. At the very end of the book the reader discovers that Bello is himself captive to a shadowy cabal, a corrupt conclave that will stop at nothing from achieving its occult objective.
On another level of abstraction, Nigerians in Space is a perfect ontology of a national malady, which, the author convinces us, has implications way beyond national boundaries. It is a malady that can be understood as a national form of schizophrenia. This much is implicit in the most telling description of the cabal responsible for all the destruction in the narrative: the ibeji. Finicky cultural activists or literal readers might raise a finger or kick at the use of the ibeji motif for the cult of retrogression. Herr Hitler ruined the swastika for some. But a close reading of the text shows that the author intends a diagnosis of the malady in thus describing our state. <
A harsh reading would say that the aspirational collapse is due to no arcane cause but a simple failure of logic and a tendency to lean toward wishful thinking and hare-brained schemes. This, painfully, is also true. But <
But I’m all frisky from the frisson of Nigerians in Space, and you must not believe me entirely about the phantoms I see. But do believe me when I say Nigerians in Space is truly a touchstone for a different discourse about us, such as we are, stars without a constellation.
Ipadeola is an award-winning poet
May 23, 2014 James Murua
A REVIEW OF DEJI OLUKOTUN’S NIGERIANS IN SPACE
Book Reviews, NigeriaDeji Bryce Olukotun, Deji Olukotun, Nigerians In Space
Nigerians in space
Nigerians in space
Book: Nigerians in Space
Author: Deji Bryce Olukotun
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Year of publication: 2014
Number of pages: 293
What does it take to get an African country to space? That is the premise of Nigerian writer Deji Olukutun’s debut novel Nigerians in Space. Nigerian Ministry of Environment top official Nurudeen Bello comes up with a project he calls “Brain Gain” to inspire his homeland to greater heights. This project involves eight scientists from around the world who have excelled in their fields of study. One of these is the main protagonist in the book called Wale Olufunmi who works for NASA in Houston, USA.
Wale has been sold on the project as part of it involved getting a Nigerian spaceship to the skies and this was his one ambition in life. He is instructed to leave by his contact Bello and he does this with a chunk of the moon that he stole from his former work place. He leaves with his wife and son Dayo to go back home and start on the Brain Gain project. This is in 1993.
Around the same period there is a young woman from Harare, Zimbabwe called Melissa Tebogo with a horrible skin condition whose father Mlungisi Tebogo works with rebel movements from all over the SADC region many from South Africa. He is given a job by the same Nigerian Bello and as payment his is to be paid some cash as well as his daughter being given treatment in France.
It doesn’t go so well for these two individuals. Wale doesn’t get contacted by his handler and he flees first to Sweden eventually settling in Cape Town, South Africa. During this period he had left his wife and fled with his son. Melissa on the other hand is a seventeen year old derailed at the airport in Paris by some nasty lady called Mrs Niyangabo and taken to some hostel to stay with some other young women. Whilst here, she gets a message from her father that they had been betrayed and he advices her to continue with her life and forget about him.
Fast forward to the present day and Wale is a bamboo furniture salesman in Cape Town who conducts tours at the observatory in the city. At the same period Melissa who is now a world famous model because of the condition that makes her skin glow. They are to meet with each other eventually.
There are other characters in the book of course. Wale’s son Dayo is a grown man now with an obsession with making snow globes which project actual moonlight like a toy he had as a child (yes the actual moon rocks stolen by his father). Also in there is Thursday a guy who works in a factory that deals with the abalone sea creature who loses his job then gets into more trouble as he tries his hand at poaching the creature in the sea and nearly gets arrested. He makes it out and eventually ends up at the centre of the abalone poaching business under Chinaman Ip in Cape Town.
Just from the description above you can tell that there is a lot happening in this book and if you are not keen you will be quite frustrated with having to follow the plot. It took me quite a while to get done with it because of this but as the different sub plots come together then the book becomes “unputdownable.” The last one hundred pages were read in one sitting in the wee hours of the morning that saw me almost missing the alarm to prepare my child to get his school bus when I blacked out at 4am. It was that good.
This Olokotun guy knows a bit about character development as we get to know the ins and outs of some of these characters we are reading about. Take for instance our main guy Wale who moves first to the US from Nigeria his birth country then leaves in haste to end up in South Africa. Very nice that. Or Melissa the other great character who follows the trail of her lost dad decades later to the belly of the beast in Abuja. Learning about these guys is vital to the plot.
Other characters aren’t as important in my opinion. Thursday the abalone factory worker turned poacher turned “consultant” for instance could easily be dropped from the whole novel and the impact would be minimal. Yet he gets a lot of attention in this book for what at best could considered a nominal figure. Meanwhile Dayo the son is given very little space and he looks like a vital guy to the narrative; he is the only thing that Wale has to remind him of the past. He also follows in the steps of his scientist dad albeit unknowingly. I would have loved to see more of him.
This book is an adventure filled one. It is Enemy of the state meets ugly duckling gone hot meets abalone enthusiast. The downside for me is that it seems like what I was reading was two different books with two major plots that failed to mesh as well as they could have.
It takes a while to figure what the hell this book is about but when you do, it is a great read. I don’t recommend it for those who seek quick literary enjoyment with their social media channels in the background. They will never finish it.