Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Easy Motion Tourist
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://leyeadenle.com/
CITY: London, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: Nigerian
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leyeadenle/?ppe=1 * http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/100african/leye-adenle/ * http://www.okayafrica.com/interview/in-conversation-with-leye-adenle-easy-motion-tourist/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
Upgraded from C to B per sketchwriter.
PERSONAL
Born in Osogbo, Nigeria.
EDUCATION:University of Ibadan, B.Sc., 1998; University of East London, M.Sc., 2001.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Go2find Ltd., London, England, database administrator, 2001-05; Greenfield Idea Resources Ltd., Lagos, Nigeria, senior project manager, 2005-06; APVS Global Consulting Ltd., Lagos, director and project manager, 2006-07; information technology manager for businesses in the Bryanston Square neighborhood of London, 2008-14; Racing Post, London, project manager and Scrum master (Agile work-flow facilitator), 2014-15; Intellection Software, project manager, Agile coach, and Scrum master, 2015; Symphony EYC, London, lead Agile coach and Scrum master, 2015-16; Kingfisher Digital, Agile coach, 2016-17; Transport for London, Scrum master, 2017; Adenle Consulting Services Ltd., London, principal lean Agile consultant, Agile coach, trainer, and Scrum master, 2017-; Post Office Ltd., Scrum master, 2017-. Also appeared as stage actor; gives readings from his works.
MEMBER:Crime Writers Association.
AWARDS:Prix Marianne, 2016, for French translation of Easy Motion Tourist.
WRITINGS
Free online novels include Chronicles of a Runs Girl. Short fiction represented in anthologies, including Sunshine Noir, edited by Annamarie Alfieri and Michael Stanley, White Sun Books, 2016; online short stories include “Anatomy of a Mermaid.” Author of satire under various pseudonyms.
SIDELIGHTS
Leye Adenle was born and raised in the Osun State of Nigeria as the grandson of King Oba Adelye Adenle, a writer and educator. His father, a Harvard-trained doctor and writer, raised him to speak English at school and Yoruba elsewhere. When he began to write his own stories, according to interviewer Geoff Ryan at Strange Horizons, Adenle “plugged into the literary tradition of a local language, but he knowingly writes in international English.”
Adenle moved to London to further his studies in information technology, graduating with a master’s degree in 2001. He returned to Nigeria for a few years, then moved back to London in 2008. Since 2014 he has worked as a project manager and work-flow facilitator for the Agile software-development platform.
Information technology may be his profession, but creative writing is Adenle’s muse. He has published essays and short stories in magazines and anthologies. More than one hundred of his satirical essays have appeared under multiple pen names. Adenle also releases some of his work online for free, where it is widely plagiarized. That seems to bother his publisher more than it disturbs the author himself. The novel Chronicles of a Runs Girl appeared online in that fashion, as did the short story “Anatomy of a Mermaid.”
If fiction is Adenle’s muse, then Lagos may be the love of his life. “Everything about Lagos is fascinating,” he told Sabo Kpade at Okay Africa: “It’s the shifting landscape from the city itself, it’s the commotion, the beauty, the music.” It is also the city where Amaka plies her trade in the novel Easy Motion Tourist. The tale begins when fledgling British journalist Guy Collins comes to Lagos to cover an election and, perhaps, sample the exotic nightlife. Instead, he finds the naked corpse of a mutilated sex worker and a much bigger story than he expected. This naive foreigner at the crime scene immediately attracts the attention of a police officer, who drags him off to jail, ostensibly as a person of interest in the killing.
That is where Guy meets Amaka, the fiercely dedicated lawyer whose self-appointed mission is to protect every sex worker in the city. Somehow the mutilated young woman in the gutter had escaped her safety net, and Amaka will not rest until she brings the perpetrator to justice. For that to happen, she will need Guy’s help. The white European outsider also becomes Adenle’s helpful narrator as he ventures into the cultural underbelly of a city not well known to the Western reader.
Adenle has told interviewers that his theme was one of violence against women, not only in Africa but also worldwide. He did not realize he was writing a crime novel until someone pointed it out to him. As the story follows Amaka and Guy ever deeper into the world of systemic police corruption, prostitution, sexual violence, occult rituals, trade in human body parts, and political intrigue, the suspense mounts dramatically.
While Guy works the streets and chases the paper trail, Amaka maintains a detailed database of “her girls” and their clients, gathering data continuously from tips the girls pass along to her on disposable cell phones, down to the level of a customer’s disease status and kinky sexual preferences. “Amaka is clearly the hero at the heart of Easy Motion Tourist,” observed reviewer Lesedi Vine at Papertrail. “She plays those around her like a game, manipulating police with ease, extracting information from rich men blinded by her beauty, and recruiting Guy to her cause without breaking a sweat.”
As the tension mounts, Amaka and Guy are joined by Inspector Bakare Ibrahim, a corrupt cop who, when he “wants to be a good cop … can be a very good one indeed,” Ben Williams informed readers in the Johannesburg Review of Books. The investigation leads the three intrepid sleuths ever closer to greedy crime boss Chief Ebenezer Amadi. “A stomach-gnawing suspicion hangs heavily over the chapters,” wrote Vine, “only lifted to reveal the gruesome reality at the very end.” “The end of Easy Motion Tourist left me very uneasy,” noted a reviewer at the Book Banque website: “I could not believe Adenle’s guts. He took my emotions by full force, … only to toss all, with reckless abandon, into further suspense.”
Easy Motion Tourist was well received by the international critical community. “Adenle delivers a horrifyingly absorbing thriller,” commented Connie Fletcher in Booklist: “This African noir debut novel hits hard.” “Easy Motion Tourist is a crime novel through and through,” Vine observed; it “is a riveting read that delivers fully on excitement and story, while bringing to life a world that’s both deeply sinister and heroically optimistic.” Interviewer E.A. Aymar summarized at Thrill Begins: “The novel is smart and immersive, complex without being needlessly complicated, and absolutely courageous in its unflinching views on corruption and Nigerian culture.” According to the author’s interview with Kpade, Amaka has several more adventures ahead of her for Adenle’s growing fan base.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2017, Connie Fletcher, review of Easy Motion Tourist, p. 20.
ONLINE
Africa in Words, https://africainwords.com/ (November 4, 2016), Jowhor Ile, author interview.
Book Banque, https://www.thebookbanque.com/ (May 26, 2017), review of Easy Motion Tourist.
Johannesburg Review of Books, https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/ (May 1, 2017), Ben Williams, review of Easy Motion Tourist.
Khaleej Times, https: //www.khaleejtimes.com/ (November 8, 2017), Rachel Dawson, author interview.
Okay Africa, http://www.okayafrica.com/ (January 17, 2017), Sabo Kpade, author interview.
Papertrail, https://papertrailpodcast.com/ (March 4, 2017), Lesedi Vine, review of Easy Motion Tourist.
Strange Horizons, http://strangehorizons.com/ (March 2, 2017), Geoff Ryman, author interview.
Thrill Begins, http://thrillbegins.com/ (September 28, 2017), E.A. Aymar, author interview.
No bio.
March 2, 2017
Geoff Ryan
Issue: 100 African Writers of SFF — Part Two: Writers in the U.K.
(Previous)
Leye Adenle
Leye Adenle
'I couldn't see, but when we were struggling with each other, I felt the body of this thing. It had the anatomy of what various cultures refer to as mermaids. It had the hands, and torso of a human; but from the waist down it had a single, streamlined limb that ended in a wide fin.'
The audience remained mute. Even the host stared with interest. 'Mr Kwesi…' he said. He scanned his notes and turned a leaf, then surveyed his audience who were waiting for him to continue. 'You said you felt this thing's body?'
'Yes.'
'Did you, erm, feel the boobs?'
Perhaps it was the inappropriateness of it, or the imaginary breasts that he squeezed in front of his chest as he said it, but the audience released and the host smirked at the loud, mucking, rupture he had inspired.
Kwesi had made the producers agree that he could stop the interview whenever he wanted to. They agreed on a sign; he would tap his left knee. He began tapping.
—"Anatomy of a Mermaid"
Leye Adenle is best known for his crime writing. Since the Nigerian publisher Cassava Republic opened up a London publication office, his novel Easy Motion Tourist is being heavily promoted in the UK.
Leye and I met after a panel at Africa Writes in which he and Nikhil Singh discussed genre in Africa. Like so many other African writers, Leye doesn't specialize in any one kind of story—but he does champion the publication of genres in Africa to help grow an African-based audience. For him, African writing has for too long been thought of as literary writing.
"For a long time my access to fiction was all very literary—James Baldwin, Toni Morrison. The few African writers I could find came across as quite literary. I was being conditioned to think that's what I have to write. The Nigerian curriculum has a lot of English novels, so I chose to do science because I was being made to read The Mill on the Floss. I wanted to read about people like me. The Mill on the Floss had no bearing on my existence.
"My very first stories I wrote in school notebooks had white villains and protagonists that were set in Europe simply because as a ten-year-old boy I was reading all these old-time children's books—the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, the Famous Five. I didn't know they were for a previous generation. I did get hold of Asimov and I loved Lord of the Rings, but I could only get hold of a graphic novel version. It was what was available. My Dad read in my exercise book an adventure story set in England, and he said write about what you know. After that all my stories were African stories."
Easy Motion Tourist has no real magic in its world, but it is about magic.
"A lot of Nigerian girls are sold to Italy and they don't run away for fear of curses. People believe in it. I hate the expression 'black magic.' It's traditional religion for people, like a Christian swearing on the Bible. The novel doesn't say in any way that magic is real. But to the protagonist a mutilated body doesn't mean serial killer, it means a ritual killer."
The novel Leye is working on now starts out like it may be a fantasy, but the magic seems to be explained away—but then turns out to be science fiction. "No spoilers. The title is The Magician's Child. There is no magic, but it starts in Lagos and ends up on the moon."
His story "Those Who Wish To Rule" is a complex philosophical fantasy in which a ruler ushers the protagonist into something secret which involves all human rulers past and present, a secret room at the heart of the world that drives all rulers mad.
"The story is a word of caution if we think ruling is easy. It's a metaphor, using science fiction. Ruling a country is more serious than anybody knows, that you have to kill people for the greater good. What they see in the third room is so terrible they have to wipe their memories, like Reagan, like Thatcher. They ruled the world and died no longer knowing the world."
Leye has done much of his best work online for free.
"My publisher gets upset with me for putting out stuff online for free." Chronicles Of A Runs Girl is a novel for free online.
"It must be the most plagiarized novel in Africa. People cut and paste from it and don't have my name on it. Six, seven years ago it was satire against the government, poking fun at it, me doing my bit. I felt Nigeria was in trouble and if it was funny, maybe it would get a conversation going. Then at one point it just stopped being funny. That point was Boko Haram and my then President saying it was no big deal. The website was supposed to be on-going, improvised news-comedy like The Onion. But can you make jokes about a government denying 200 girls have been kidnapped?
"Anatomy of a Mermaid" is a short story available on his website. It's about a man who believes himself rescued from Lagos lagoon by a mermaid. The story explores the tension between traditional beliefs and more generic fantasies that are imported from the West. The hero believes that though he didn't see the mermaid, he felt an entirely Western style mermaid, and starts to talk about evolution.
The Ghanaian woman who rescued him on the beach moves in with him, and has a different view. 'She told him he must never go near water again and she asked if his people used to worship a water spirit in the past.' The story then links the sexualisation of the mermaid (a talk show host asks the hero if he felt the mermaid's breasts) with tensions in sexual relations between traditional and Europeanized Africans. This is a description of Kwesi's Ghanaian partner:
She offered sex like she offered food. The doorbell rang and he was spared the feeling of shame that would follow, when he chose one or the other, his appetite for either making him an accomplice in this passive abuse of a person. It didn't even jar him anymore that she would not or could not use the word 'sex' in her language or in any other language. See me.
The story differentiates among expectations of marriage—Kwesi's own, more traditional Yoruba woman's, and his partner's. It contrasts Kwesi's scientific explanation for what he saw, and more traditional views.
Fay, an albino filmmaker who says she was born of Africans and raised abroad, tells him that she believes in Mami Wata, the pan-African myth of water spirits. So there is a difference between a Western mermaid, and African water spirits, and the scientific explanations that Kwesi has for either.
Fay's white-but-African face inspires Kwesi's lust and he loses interest in his Ghanaian. Tellingly, the story is illustrated with a pulchritudinous image of a Western mermaid.
Sex, whiteness, diaspora, traditional belief, and science—it's possible to read the very image of the mermaid, a mix of different ways of being, an image of hybrid diasporan culture.
I ask Leye how long he has been in the UK, and he says, "Too long." Leye is Nigerian from Osogbo city in Osun State. He arrived just before the Millennium, finished a Master's in IT at the University of East London and got a job. He's not had much call to use his knowledge of IT.
His father was a medical doctor who went to Harvard. But after owning a private practice as a doctor, he became a printer and a publisher.
"It's in the family. I always wanted to be a writer. My father wrote a lot but never tried to publish. Mostly he wrote about the place of the black man, an alternative religion for the black person, very nationalistic and pro-African.
"My grandfather who was a writer, made his wealth partly from establishing schools. A primary school is still named after him till this day. He wrote two books in Yoruban before made being made king, Oba Adeleye Adenle the First, the Ataojo of Oshobo."
One of the few tourist destinations in Nigeria is a shrine to Yoruban Gods that is also a breathtaking work of art by Suzanne Wenger. Leye's grandfather gave her the chance to build the shrine and then made her a priestess.
Read a bit more about Suzanne Wenger's and the shrine on the Nairaland website.
Unlike many African writers, Leye's education did not cut him off from his mother tongue. "My father said speak Yoruba at home and English in school. I can't remember not knowing both. I was always reading Yoruban literature. Fagunwa (translated by Wole Soyinka as Forest of a Thousand Demons), Tutuola (The Palm Wine Drinkard), Oleku by Professor Akinhumi Isola. I got taken to see Hubert Ogunde's plays growing up, also the Baba Sala plays. Ogunde was a cultural treasure with his troupe of performers. He made amazing movies. Truthful, not like what Nollywood does."
Of all the African writers I have interviewed, Leye seems one of the most <
"I totally agree that I write in an international style accessible to anybody. I'm not writing for a specific set of people. I see my books fitting into The New York Times bestseller list. That I'm an African writer is secondary.
"However I've always been conscious of not imitating. A lot of writers imitate Chinua Achebe; they want to write like him. You can start picking his style, his words, used by so many new writers. You can spot it—that's from Anthills of the Savannah. Achebe was writing for people of his time. My parents spoke and wrote like that; it was right for the time."
Leye's novel has had rapturous reception in France rather as did Ghanaian Nii Parkes's A Tail of the Blue Bird.
"There it is translated as Lagos Lady. I sometimes think it's a different book in the French translation. I do a bookshop signing and sell 120 copies. There was a three-page article about me in Paris Match. I met a lady in Toulouse who has translated Wole Soyinka. She says the next big thing is African literature and she is teaching my book to her students. It gets great reviews in France and England but I got two not so great reviews in Nigeria, maybe because it's not literary. I've since had amazing reviews from Nigeria.
"A woman at an event in Lyon started talking about the book and her eyes welled up with tears. She said Amaka was the best woman character by a man she'd ever read. People ask me if I am a feminist, and I say yes. I used to call myself a humanist, but now I'm happy to say I'm a feminist. It's like Black Lives Matter versus All Lives Matter. Of course, all lives matter, but it's the current injustice against women we are focusing on now.
"I think of about 200 million Nigerians who spend money on cinema and music and think of them buying books. It should be an immense market. People I don't know keep getting in touch from Nigeria asking where they can buy the book. They've gone to this place, that place. Distributors will only distribute books that are on the curriculum. I think we should stop killing trees and just go onto phones and tablets."
Post Office Ltd
Scrum Master
Company Name Post Office Ltd
Dates Employed Sep 2017 – Present Employment Duration 4 mos
Location London, United Kingdom
Contract scrum master tasked with coaching agile teams and business stakeholders.
Adenle Consulting Services Ltd
Principal Lean Agile Consultant - Agile Coach - Trainer - Scrum master
Company Name Adenle Consulting Services Ltd
Dates Employed May 2017 – Present Employment Duration 8 mos
Location London, United Kingdom
Transport for London
Scrum Master
Company Name Transport for London
Dates Employed May 2017 – Jun 2017 Employment Duration 2 mos
Location London, United Kingdom
Kingfisher Digital, part of Kingfisher Plc
Agile Coach
Company Name Kingfisher Digital, part of Kingfisher Plc
Dates Employed Sep 2016 – May 2017 Employment Duration 9 mos
Symphony EYC
Agile Project Manager
Company Name Symphony EYC
Dates Employed Oct 2015 – Aug 2016 Employment Duration 11 mos
Location London, United Kingdom
Lead Agile Coach. Scrum master. Responsible for organisation's transition to Agile.
Intellection Software
Project Manager / Agile coach / Scrum master
Company Name Intellection Software
Dates Employed May 2015 – Oct 2015 Employment Duration 6 mos
Racing Post
Project Manager / Scrum master
Company Name Racing Post
Dates Employed Mar 2014 – Apr 2015 Employment Duration 1 yr 2 mos
Bryanston Square
IT Manager
Company Name Bryanston Square
Dates Employed Jan 2008 – Feb 2014 Employment Duration 6 yrs 2 mos
APVS Global Consulting Ltd
Director / Project Manager
Company Name APVS Global Consulting Ltd
Dates Employed 2006 – 2007 Employment Duration 1 yr
Location Lagos Nigeria
Greenfield Idea Resources Ltd
Senior Project Manager
Company Name Greenfield Idea Resources Ltd
Dates Employed 2005 – 2006 Employment Duration 1 yr
Location Lagos Nigeria
Go2find Ltd
Database administrator
Company Name Go2find Ltd
Dates Employed 2001 – 2005 Employment Duration 4 yrs
Location London, United Kingdom
Education
University of East London
Degree Name Master of Science (MSc)
Field Of Study Information Technology
Dates attended or expected graduation 2001
University of Ibadan
Degree Name Bachelor of Science (BSc)
Field Of Study Economics
Dates attended or expected graduation 1998
Leye Adenle
Sub-genre: female sleuth, international, thriller
Leye Adenle is a Nigerian writer who has also appeared on stage in plays including Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again.
Leye is named after his grandfather who was also a writer, Oba Adeleye Adenle I, a former king of Oshogbo in South West Nigeria.
Easy Motion Tourist, his first novel, is published by Cassava Republic Press (2016).
Leye lives in London.
Leye Adenle
Sub-genre: female sleuth, international, thriller
Leye Adenle is a Nigerian writer who has also appeared on stage in plays including Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again.
Leye is named after his grandfather who was also a writer, Oba Adeleye Adenle I, a former king of Oshogbo in South West Nigeria.
Easy Motion Tourist, his first novel, is published by Cassava Republic Press (2016).
Leye lives in London.
This March we’re lucky to have Leye Adenle, author of EASY MOTION TOURIST in South Africa.
Leye Adenle is a Nigerian writer. He has written a number of short stories and flash fiction pieces. Leye has appeared on stage in London in plays including Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again. He comes from a family of writers, the most famous of whom was his grandfather, Oba Adeleye Adenle I, a former king of Oshogbo in South West Nigeria. He lives in London.
Writer’s Passport: E.A. Aymar Talks with Leye Adenle
By E.A. Aymar
Leye Adenle kept coming across my radar. First, a friend who knew I was researching sex trafficking for an upcoming novel recommended I check out a Nigerian writer who had written ably about the subject, with the kind of empathy that often eludes writers. And then there was the review by the excellent (and must-read) crime fiction book blogger David Nemeth, who wrote glowingly about Adenle’s novel, EASY MOTION TOURIST, calling it “both a great read and a great story.”
I bought a copy of EASY MOTION TOURIST a couple of months ago, read it quickly and, like everyone else who’s read it, loved it. <
I kept thinking of David Simon’s The Wire as I read it, particularly in how deftly Adenle switches perspectives from a British journalist named Guy Collins who is new to the country, to several low-level gangsters, to a mysterious woman named Amaka who shares a connection to the dark depravity of sex trafficking.
So obviously, when we came up with the idea of a series of interviews with international writers, I immediately reached out to Leye Adenle, and he was gracious enough to take the time to answer my questions.
E.A. Aymar: I thought the wide range of character viewpoints you assumed in EASY MOTION TOURIST were all utterly convincing. Which was the most difficult to write?
Leye Adelne: I feel they were all equally fun to write, and as such none was difficult. I basically got to know and admire each of the characters. Each time I wrote from their point of view, it was like taking a journey with them and being privy to everything they could see, feel, think, know, fear, want.
You’ve mentioned that Amaka will return in your future work. What about Guy Collins? Will he be back as well?
I think of the series as “the Amaka series.” Guy is currently part of Amaka’s world so I expect him to be in subsequent stories – unless they fall out or she finds another Guy. The second book, WHEN TROUBLE SLEEPS, is out next year and opens where EASY MOTION TOURIST ended, sort of. This means Guy has returned to London while Amaka is in Lagos dealing with the consequences of her one-woman crusade.
Did you interview Nigerian police officers in the course of your research? If so, what are their thoughts on the police force? And have any read your book and given you their feedback?
I did not interview any police officers because I already know quite a few. I’m not aware of any who have read EASY MOTION TOURIST, but I can only imagine that if there are, some of them might want to invite me for closed door ‘discussions.’
Have you received any criticism regarding your depiction of police in Nigeria?
It’s both a relief and a tragedy that not one Nigerian has objected to my depiction of the police force. What I described is the truth many Nigerians know.
What do you think will be the recurrent theme in your future work? Will prostitution, and the treatment of women, remain a significant factor? (Note to readers: this answer contains a spoiler to EASY MOTION TOURIST.)
Amaka manages a charity that works with sex workers and other vulnerable women. The plight of women is always going to be important to her. If you don’t want trouble from her, don’t harm any of her girls. There are so many other ways women experience violence. Dealing with each and every one of these is Amaka’s thing. If a girl dies in suspicious circumstances, say, in the President’s bed, Amaka will go after the President. That could be the third book
Did you have any problems finding a publisher, given your unflinching take on prostitution? In the States, certain subjects (generally pedophilia, sex trafficking, animal abuse) are largely taboo. Have you found that to be the same in Nigeria and the U.K.?
I sent out a few queries and got a few rejections for early versions of the manuscript. Looking back, they were right to have rejected the book based on what I sent. I still cringe to think anyone read the earliest versions of the manuscript.
By the time the story was ready and I was confident with where it was, I got offers from the two publishers I sent it to: a U.K. publisher and a Nigerian publisher. I went with the Nigerian publisher, Cassava Republic Press, who then opened up shop in the U.K.
It sounds like you’re the type of writer to follow where a story takes you, regardless of genre (particularly with your short stories). For example, I imagine you’d have an idea for a story, and follow it to its place in crime fiction, or science fiction, or fantasy, or romance. Is that fair to say, or do you want your stories to stay in the crime fiction world?
I absolutely let the story go where it wants to go. With EASY MOTION TOURIST, I had to be told it was a crime novel. I thought I was simply writing about violence against women. I have a discomfort with genres. I feel that writing with a genre in mind might make for good, follows-the-rules writing, but genre-defying masterpieces like Yuri Herrera’s TRANSMIGRATION OF BODIES ignore, or are absolutely oblivious of, the rules.
And, thus, genius happens.
You’ve said that your writing heroes are Borges and Patterson. What about other mediums? Are there musicians, television shows, movies, etc., that you find particularly inspiring? Or that were inspiring for EASY MOTION TOURIST?
The music of Fatai Rolling Dollar, especially his version of the song, Easy Motion Tourist, played on loop when I was writing EASY MOTION TOURIST. Other musicians who provide the necessary soundtrack for my writing are Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Michael Franks, Bob Dylan, Asa.
I have watched every episode of Seinfeld over a hundred times each. I also find the artists who craft red wine to be very inspiring.
Is there an inherent difficulty in being an African novelist and having your books read internationally? It seems like your work has been well-received in France and the U.K., but are there any social/cultural complications? For example, it’s not uncommon for books to be divided by reading audiences in the United States – often sexually and racially.
When I’m with fellow authors at writing festivals, the magnitude and pureness of the acceptance I experience has been humbling. We are writers. Color, sex, age, first-time or veteran author, obscure or million-copy selling, those things don’t matter. I wish it were the same with the publishing industry.
What’s been the best part about being a published novelist? I like to end on a happy note.
Being able to tick ‘write a novel’ off my bucket list.
E.A. Aymar is the managing editor of The Thrill Begins. His newest novel is YOU’RE AS GOOD AS DEAD, and he writes a monthly column for the Washington Independent Review of Books. His short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in a number of top crime fiction publications. E.A. Aymar is also involved in a collaboration with DJ Alkimist, a NY and DC-based DJ, where his stories are set to her music. For more information about that project, visit www.eaalkimist.com.
Leye Adenle, winner of the first ever Prix Marianne in 2016, is a Nigerian writer living and working in London as an agile coach - sort of a trainer of computer geeks.
His short story, The Assassination, in the anthology, Sunshine Noir, was a finalist for the 2017 CWA short story dagger award. Had he won, a Nigerian would have been rewarded for crime.
Leye (pronounced Leye, not Leia like in Princes Leia) has written several short stories under his own name, and over a hundred satirical pieces under various other appropriated names. His writing has appeared in publications such as the Big Issue, and he has written and recorded pieces for BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service. He very much enjoyed doing that.
Leye has also appeared on stage in London in plays including Ola Rotimi's Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again in which, by his own estimation, he performed brilliantly well and should have been awarded a BAFTA.
Leye comes from a family of writers, the most famous of whom was his grandfather, Oba Adeleye Adenle I, a former king of Oshogbo in South West Nigeria. Leye has no intentions of ever becoming King.
When not writing, Leye (not Princess Leia) likes to ponder the meaning of life from the point of view of a foraging ant that has happened upon a delicious drop of wine. Red. Preferably South African. Western Cape. And full bodied. And perhaps a morsel of cheese. Blue cheese.
Q&A: Jowhor Ile interviews Leye Adenle on Easy Motion Tourist
By Africa in Words on 4 November , 2016 • ( 1 )
This is the first in a series of three posts in which debut authors Leye Adenle, Julie Iromuanya, and Jowhor Ile interview each other on their first books. Here Jowhor Ile and Leye Adenle discuss Leye’s first novel Easy Motion Tourist, a crime thriller set in contemporary Lagos.
easy-motion-coverJowhor: The city of Lagos features strongly as a character in Easy Motion Tourist. The reader experiences Lagos from within mansions and out on the rowdy streets, from swanky to dingy bars. This allows multiple perspectives and a richer way of seeing the story and the world in which it is set. There is, alongside this everyday Lagos you portray, a different Lagos, dark and extreme, that one might not encounter on an ordinary day. Can you speak a little on how you came about this world?
Leye: I love Lagos. She’s up there with my top three greatest love affairs, and like every memorable lover, she has, on occasion, shown me her different sides. Along with the beautiful, I have seen the worst of her. I have inhaled her breath, I have felt the calluses on her palms, I have seen the places she hides her shame. I have seen how she treats her poor, her weak, her unfortunate, and her gullible. I have seen the ugly face she reserves for the many souls she consumes on a daily basis, but yet she fascinates me. She is a beautiful, dangerous, exciting character. She’s that friend you keep inviting to your parties even though you know they’ll likely end up causing a fight and pissing everybody off, but they still make the party awesome!
Jowhor: In the first chapter, Guy Collins who is a hack journalist from the UK arrives in Lagos on some assignment but then witnesses a horrific scene outside a bar where a young woman’s mutilated body is dumped on the roadside. His lack of expertise, experience, and outsider status in some way seduces the reader into the genuinely exotic, dark world where extreme things happen. He is also quick, impulsive sometimes, and self-doubting. I found his contradictions interesting. Why did you choose him as a narrator? What did you find most interesting about his point of view and his character? What challenges did you have writing him?
Leye: Many writers try to explain how they are not really the writers but mere recorders. The story often comes fully formed and you merely ‘retell’ it onto paper as you have received it. The story came fully formed. I was only being honest in my reporting of it. Guy was always going to be the narrator because that was how the story landed whole in my brain. That said, I think Lagos as a character comes out well when narrated from the point of view of an outsider. Was it challenging writing him? Not really. He’s a man, like me, he lives in London, like me, and in real life he’s my friend. Yes, there is a real life Guy Collins.
Jowhor: The plot of Easy Motion Tourist is fast paced; the story moves nimbly through really complex paths and we hear from a kaleidoscope of voices ranging from prostitutes to social worker to journalist, and the story never loses momentum. I am interested to know how close to the story you had to get? What preparations did you make to bring authenticity to the characters? And why do you think it is important for this story to be heard through multiple voices?
Leye: Erm, just for the record, I did not do any actual, physical research into some of the subject matters of my book. I relied fully on what turned out to be amazingly accurate imagination. I have never seen the insides of a brothel. Just thought I’d put that out there. —Wait o. How come I know my imagination was correct? —But seriously, I spent a lot of my early adult years in Lagos. In that time, I met a lot of interesting, fascinating people many of whom have turned up in my novel. Everybody has a story and everybody deserves the chance to tell their own story. This is the way I feel about characters in a book; they are real, at the very least in the mind of the author writing them, and as such they have a real story to tell, and who best to tell your story than you?
Jowhor: There is a cinematic quality to the novel, which I enjoyed. The scenes are imbued with drama, even when it’s just someone turning off a phone and putting it away to resume a conversation. It was easy to imagine it as a movie. Can I ask if there are any plans towards screen adaptation?
Leye: If you know Mr. Tarantino, please, please, please, let me know. I would love to see Easy Motion Tourist made into a movie one day. I would really love that. I imagine Genevieve playing the lead role, Amaka. If you know her, please beg her to read the book.
Jowhor: I was most fascinated by the character Amaka. She is strong willed, resourceful and quick, and there is a sense of mystery about her which I found compelling. I wanted to read more about her. Do you think, as it sometimes happens in thriller novels, that you might return to some of these characters in subsequent books?
Leye: As it happens, Amaka has been getting up to all sorts in the nearly completed sequel. It’s currently titled When Trouble Sleeps.
Jowhor: While reading your book, I recalled stories I read in my adolescence which were also set in Lagos. I am thinking of some titles by Cyprian Ekwensi. He wrote great stories set in Lagos, often highlighting the chaotic nature of city life and its bright and dark sides. I also thought of the Pacesetter series which were often in the thriller genre. Stories filled with suspense and intrigue, set in places I recognised. In the decades that followed, as the publishing industry in Nigeria went into decline, we stopped seeing these novels. Now, we are witnessing a slow but welcome increase in stories coming out of Nigeria—but not much in the thriller genre. I would like to hear your thoughts on that, and could you also share with us some of the authors you love reading and what you learn from them?
Leye: I’m a total fan of James Patterson’s writing. His books and the Pacesetter series have obviously seriously influenced my writing when I’m writing crime thriller fiction. I take from Mr. Patterson the true spirit of lean prose. The invaluable lesson that less is more. But I write other genres. My short stories, especially, tend to range from noir to fantasy to just outright strangeness. My biggest influence there is Jorge Luis Borges. I’m not sure who my influence was when I wrote Chronicles of a Runs Girl, a novel written from the point of view of a woman. I think genre fiction is the next big thing waiting to happen in Africa. Just like afrobeats has conquered the world, genre fiction from Africa is going to become big.
Jowhor: Thank you so much for your book and for taking the time to respond to my questions.
Leye Adenle is an actor and a writer. Easy Motion Tourist (published by Cassava Republic) is his first novel and won the 2016 Prix Marianne. He will read from and discuss his book at the 2016 Ake Arts & Book Festival on November 17. Follow him on Twitter @LeyeAdenle.
Jowhor Ile’s writing has been published in McSweeney’s Quarterly and Litro Magazine. His first novel And After Many Days was published in Nigeria by Farafina Books and in the United States by Tim Duggan Books. He will read from and discuss his book at the 2016 Ake Arts & Book Festival on November 17. Follow him on Twitter @JowhorIle.
BYSabo Kpade
Jan. 17, 2017 06:23PM EST
In Conversation With Leye Adenle, Author of Lagosian Thriller 'Easy Motion Tourist'
We spoke to the author of Easy Motion Tourist who has written and exciting new novel set in contemporary Lagos.
Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist is Lagos in prose form. It is primarily the story of Amaka, a woman who is a guardian angle to the city’s sex workers.
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When one of her “girls” is found dead, she suspects Chief Amadi, a businessman who is rumoured to have gained his wealth from what is believed to be human rituals.
Guy Collins, a British chancer who she bailed from a police station, accompanies her on her mission, as both dig deep into the seedy underworld of Africa’s populous city.
Easy Motion Tourist won the 2016 Prix Marianne in France chosen from a total of twenty seven novels. I caught up with Adenle in Maloko, a creperie owned by a dreadlocked Cameroonian-French man, and one of very few black owned businesses that have opened in a now gentrified Camberwell.
All symbolic significance between the book we discussed and the restaurant we ate in surfaced only when editing the transcripts.
What fascinates you about Lagos?
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How much time do you spend there and still spend there in Lagos?
I have not been in Lagos for a couple of years now. Simply because I've had to be in many other parts of the world. I've been in about 5 different countries this year already. I'll be in Lagos as well later this year.
From what age roughly to what age?
I'd say mid-20's to mid-30's.
Where in Lagos was this?
Mostly on the Victoria island.
Do you think Easy Motion Tourist would have been any different if you had lived say, up to 20 or more of your formative years in Lagos?
I don't really think the amount of time spent in a place should really matter.
Collins “the white man” going in search of new experiences in an African nation is a narrative we are by now familiar with. Did you worry at all that you might be on a well-trodden path?
A black woman, Amaka, is the protagonist. He's not even the antagonist. The thing is, I do understand why for the English speaking world who have access to the English version of the book, there's a tendency to assume often that the book is about Guy Collins.
If you were to look at the French version which is called, Lagos Lady, every single review in the French press gets it and puts Amaka at the center. I think it also says a lot that it seems to be doing a lot better in France.
Is it possible to see Amaka and Collins as individuals with their own agency free from any suggestions that might arise from her being a black African woman and he a male white British male?
I've had discussions with people and people who should know, professors in university, especially a lady in a university in France who talked about how my portrayal of Africa is significantly different from what has become used to and what they are tired of, which is of the hang up with the colonial past, or with the “white savior”, or with issues of race and stuff. You won't find that in my book. What you'll find in my book is a true depiction of Lagos.
Why the title Easy Motion Tourist?
From 2003, it was called Amaka, and it only became Easy Motion Tourist later on in the year. At the very beginning, in fact before that, it was called, 48 Hours in Lagos.
Is it not problematic to typecast an Igbo man as a money hungry businessman who is suspected of using humans for money rituals?
No. The same way I was not worried about the relationship between, about having a white man in Nigeria, a white journalist, the same way I don't worry about Amaka's lifestyle and her choices, it's the same way I didn't worry about any one of my characters.
Okay, but are you not taking advantage of these unflattering perceptions of the Igbo business man, even without intending to like you say?
I think it goes a long way to support my position that I'm not worried about it because this is the first time that someone pointed out that.
No, I didn't worry about it because the book is filled with good and bad people of every ethnicity and every color as well. I just wrote about people. I didn't mean offense and in truth, if taken as a whole, there is no offense and none should be taken.
You write dialogue brilliantly and not many novelists, I feel, do that very well. Is this a skill you always had and maybe developed?
I do not sit in front of you and say to you, "Okay, right now I'm enjoying this interview very much and I'm quite amazed by the thought that's gone into the questions, so therefore I'm going to be very participatory in this."
No, you can tell it from my answers, you can tell it from my engagement with you. We don't go about making statements of how we feel before we speak. You see it from what we say. Even life, we don't have the advantage of a chapter setting the tone for our discourse, for your engagement. Why should our characters do it in books we write?
Is there such a thing as Nigerian English?
Nigerians will tell you "I'm coming", when they're leaving.
I've heard the same said about Italians.
English no longer belongs to anybody. I don't think it ever did. It's a very strong mixture of several language anyway. Is there such a thing as Nigerian-English?
I think there's a beautiful thing called Nigerian-English which is an attempt, unconscious as it were, to maintain the beauty of some of the traditional languages that we communicate through the use of this common language, English.
What did you make of the Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, reportedly threatening, during the 2015 Nigerian presidential election, to make all Igbo “perish in the lagoon” if they don't vote for APC?
That really irks my soul. I really feel bad about it. I remember ranting about this on Facebook as of the time. Even though I'm Yoruba but actually, that's second to being Nigerian. That is second to being human. I think he owes Nigerians, every human being an apology for saying that, but guess what? My opinion doesn't really matter because I'm just a bloody writer.
Except that it does. The reception for EMT in France has been good. Tell us more about it.
For some reason in France, my book seems to be doing well and a lot of people are getting to know about it from other people, from newspapers, from magazines.
It's selling in a lot of bookshelves. I found several copies in the oldest bookshop in France. I think it's doing well there, but we've only sold the French rights and the Spanish rights.
Why do you think the French have taken to it more than say, the British have?
I have absolutely no idea.
Is EMT going to be a series?
I don't know if the right word is series because there's a sequel, but then the sequel is a continuation of the first book, obviously, but there are going to be other books. Some of them will be spin-offs. I really don't know what the definition of a series is.
More than two books?
We're hoping there's going to be about 20 Amaka books.
Will Collins have the lead in any of the other ones?
Maybe it'll become about Amaka and Guy. Maybe it will be called the, Amaka and Guy series, one day, I don't know.
The earliest portrayal of Lagos that's I've read are in Cyprian Ekwensi's short stories and, more vividly drawn, in those of Ben Okri’s Incidents At The Shrine and Stars Of A New Coffee. Are there any that you've read and are memorable?
I wouldn't say anybody influenced me in setting my book in Lagos. It was only a natural thing for me.
Lagos is the kind of character you want in your book. It's a character who changes over time. It's a character who's got many different sides to them. It's a character who's just going to surprise you. It's an amazing character with a huge capacity for life and a huge ability to just surprise and intrigue. I'm surprised more people are not writing about Lagos.
Why did you choose to to write a crime novel rather than say, and sorry to use the dreaded word, a “literary” novel?
When I was writing this particular story, I did not realize I was writing a crime thriller. I was writing about a particular type of violence against women. The crime thriller part just came naturally. It was just the right way for me at that time to tell this story. It could have been told a million other ways, I agree. I didn't think I was writing a crime thriller.
I expect Easy Motion Tourist to be a very good thriller if adapted to film or a TV movie. Is there talk of a film adaptation so far?
We've had some interest. We've been contacted by some production houses and some directors. We are still on the lookout for a viable proposal to make this into something else, a movie or a TV series or something.
Who would you like to see play Amaka?
There's only one name Genevieve Nnaji
Good choice. How about Collins?
There's only one person who's face I see when i think of Guy Collins, Jude Law.
How about Amadi the villain?
Justus Esiri
Would you be alright with a company of non-Nigerian actors and director taking over a film adaptation?
So long as they can do the story justice, I'm happy. Anybody can act, anybody can do it as long as they do it right.
Thank you, Leye Adenle.
Thank you for this interview.
Sabo Kpade is an Associate Writer with Spread The Word. His short story Chibok was shortlisted for the London Short Story Prize 2015. His first play, Have Mercy on Liverpool Street was longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award. He lives in London.
Author Leye Adenle finds the plot as he writes
Rachel Dawson/Sharjah
Filed on November 8, 2017
Authors Saad Mohammed Rahim, Tayari Jones, and Leye Adenie during a session at the Sharjah international Book Fair. - Photo by M. Sajjad
Adenle writes with a thrill to unfold the story and hopes the readers feel the same adrenaline rush
Leye Adenle, the award-winning crime writer, is in the UAE for the first time as a guest speaker at the Sharjah International Book Fair. We caught up with the author backstage before his panel discussion.
Adenle's first novel, Easy Motion Tourist, proves to be a compelling read as it contains a vivid illustration of a crime at the heart of the Lagos city. The story centres around a brave lawyer Amaka, who attempts to safeguard the poverty-ridden women of the town involved in flesh trade. The plot thickens after the murder of a local woman.
"I never start with writing the plot, I discover it as I write along," says Adenle. He fondly recalls a tip given to him by a fellow writer. "Take the main characters and throw them down a cliff without worrying about how they'll survive." Adenle writes with a thrill to unfold the story and hopes the readers feel the same adrenaline rush. On what inspires his character sketches, he says "extraordinary people in everyday settings".
Adenle admits that Stephen King's Firestarter has made him scream. However, crime isn't the only genre on this author's bookshelf. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee are among his favourite reads.
The author's obsession with the written word began quite early. "My brother and I would constantly draw comic strips or create imaginary characters at home."
Adenle comes from a family of writers; the most famous of whom was his grandfather, Oba Adeleye Adenle I, a former king of Oshogbo in South West Nigeria.
For aspiring crime writers out there, Leye Adenle hopes you "invest all your heart and soul into writing and never give up".
reporters@khaleejtimes.com
Easy Motion Tourist
Connie Fletcher
113.18 (May 15, 2017): p20.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Easy Motion Tourist. By Leye Adenle. June 2017. 328p. Cassava Republic, paper, $14.95 (9781911115069); e-book (9781911115076).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Fletcher, Connie. "Easy Motion Tourist." Booklist, 15 May 2017, p. 20. General OneFile, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496084745/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a2ecdc27. Accessed 7 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A496084745
A knockout crime debut from Lagos: Ben Williams reviews Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist
May 1, 2017Ben WilliamsLeave a Commenton A knockout crime debut from Lagos: Ben Williams reviews Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist
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A knockout crime debut from Lagos: Ben Williams reviews Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist
May 1, 2017Ben WilliamsLeave a Commenton A knockout crime debut from Lagos: Ben Williams reviews Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist
Easy Motion Tourist
Leye Adenle
Cassava Republic Press/Pan Macmillan South Africa 2016
1.
On September 21st 2015, a Monday, a man was abducted from his farm in Ondo state, Nigeria. It was his seventy-seventh birthday.
His name was Samuel Oluyemisi Falae—Olu Falae for short. No ordinary citizen, Olu Falae was a former finance minister and presidential contender, having run for the latter office in 1999. After his release, Falae claimed that his kidnappers were Fulani—nomadic herdsmen who often clash with farmers in that part of the country, which is a few hundred kilometres north of Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub and Africa’s largest city. In one colourful account, Falae is quoted as saying his kidnappers ‘slashed him with their cutlasses and dragged him into the bush, threatening to kill him every half an hour’.
A month after his abduction—Falae was found three days after he disappeared; whether a substantial ransom was paid or not is contested—it came to light that the Nigerian government had issued a $5 billion fine—that’s five billion US, an unheard-of sum—against the country’s largest mobile phone operator, MTN.
In South Africa, we took note. MTN is a South African company; a fine that large represented an indirect raid by a foreign power on our collective wealth. It seemed to be a new method of tribute extraction by one nation against a rival.
The ostensible reason for the fine was that MTN was the biggest culprit in the ongoing saga of Nigeria’s unregistered SIM card problem. Millions of active mobile phone SIMs were (and remain) unlinked to individual users in Nigeria, a state of affairs that is not only illegal there, but also has—according to Nigeria’s security services—fueled crime on every level, from common burglary to international terrorism.
Not to mention kidnapping: the authorities claimed that Falae’s abductors conducted ransom negotiations via MTN SIM cards—cards for which MTN could provide no reliable data, in terms of unmasking the voices on the other end of the line. In South Africa, financial journalists grasping for an explanation of an unfathomable economic calamity suddenly had one served up on a platter: Falae’s kidnapping was the final straw; Nigeria’s outraged government had had enough; the delinquent mobile phone operator had to pay, and the price was $1,000 for each of MTN’s 5.1 million unregistered SIMs.
2.
Whether a crime whose basic facts are in doubt—was a ransom paid? did police in fact rescue Falae, or was he set free?—could trigger a trans-continental, billion-dollar proxy trade war or not, Nigeria’s millions of unregistered SIM cards certainly make for richly-sown territory to explore, if you’ve the imagination of a crime writer. And Leye Adenle duly adds MTN to the witness roll in his debut crime novel, Easy Motion Tourist. (To be fair, the company is never called out by its brand name in the book, but it’s there all along.)
The novel’s title derives from a Fatai Rolling Dollar song about nocturnal misadventure. The unwitting ‘tourist’ in this case is one Guy Collins, a journalist working for a fly-by-night news startup in the UK who is sent to Lagos to cover Nigeria’s impending elections. Hopelessly green—he hasn’t yet learned not to dole out faith like leaflets to every passerby—Guy arrives expecting a straightforward gig: the stories that he will file from his comfortable hotel room (which will carry romance and exoticism with them by default; he’s in Africa, after all) will earn him street cred back home and, crucially, another shot with his half-Nigerian ex, Melissa.
Instead, on his first night, Guy meanders into a nightclub, outside of which a woman’s mutilated body is dumped, which causes a huge commotion. This attracts the attention of a shady-looking unit of policemen, who promptly identify Guy as a person of interest to their investigation, and request that he accompany them back to the station. A wild drive through the Lagos night ensues, and Guy is certain he will never see Melissa, much less the UK, again.
In jail, he meets—or rather, is rescued by—the other half of what will become the most endearing crime-fighting duo that the genre has seen in many years. Amaka is a woman whose street smarts appear to be matched only by her zeal for keeping Lagos’ sex workers safe while they’re on the job. The dead woman outside the club somehow slipped through her meticulously-knotted safety net. Like the dodgy cops, who are now being harassed by their superiors to make arrests—mutilated bodies make for bad optics during election seasons—Amaka needs to get to the bottom of the story. For that, she needs Guy.
•Listen to Leye Adenle read from Easy Motion Tourist
3.
The sure grip on character and plot that Adenle demonstrates, steering Guy and Amaka through his opening gambit, ensures that there’s never cause to wince about what might be called authorial ‘trope signaling’. Yes, the black woman who runs a non-profit seizes the stage from the white professional—from the moment they meet, he’s in her movie, not the other way around—but their interior lives are too convincing to allow complaint about what otherwise might seem an obvious ploy.
In fact, if there’s one master trope coursing through Easy Motion Tourist, it’s an oft-under-emphasised one in African fiction: the book derives much of its narrative power from what might be termed the ‘clash of modernities’ that occurs in Nigeria, and indeed in African countries across the continent, every day. Having a white character helps make this clash, in which the African present day effortlessly pushes potential rivals for attention—the state of the London Stock Exchange, say, or an election in France—to the margins of consciousness, more obvious: Guy’s haplessness ensures that the fundamental sophistication of life in Nigeria remains in sharp relief at all times. Africa’s modernity is an all-consuming prospect for the newcomer.
As Adenle dances sure-footedly in his pages with a white Westerner’s perspective, so too does he lay down a crafty commentary on Nigeria’s relationship with its former colonial Metropolitan. Namely: it barely exists. Nigerians now manage relationships with the global North, the global South and the global In-between quite on their own. If a hallmark of modernity is that everything can and eventually will be commodified, then Nigeria is now the Metropolitan—in Nigeria at least. Your modernity, wherever it flew in from—the West, or other parts of Africa—is subject to strict exchange controls, and, local or foreign, you are the commodity, surveilled and tracked by a thousand unregistered SIMs. As Guy learns, when you leave home for Africa these days, in the clash of modernities you lose the power to negotiate the terms of your continued subsistence.
Here, then, is a classic ‘Johnny-comes-to-Joburg’ tale of urban Africa, with a delightful twist. Instead of Joburg, of course, Guy is a temporary labourer in Lagos, which, meanwhile, is a Russian-doll city of modernities within modernities—as best exemplified by the crime at the novel’s heart. The going theory about the woman whose body was dumped outside the nightclub is that her death is related to the elections: certain of her body parts were needed for a witchdoctor’s brew, medicine to boost some local strongman’s chances during the poll. The opportunities for sleight-of-hand and subversion presented by stereotypes like this, as the mystery is slowly and entertainingly unravelled by Amaka and Guy, are expertly exploited by Adenle: in the end, what appears to be a random act of violent ‘juju’ points, in fact, to the servicing of Western markets from globalisation’s underbelly. Adenle sews it so neatly together you barely pick up the stitches, until he’s ready to point them out to you.
4.
Down in the underbelly with Amaka and Guy is the mercurial Inspector Bakare Ibrahim, leader of Fire-for-Fire, the police gang that rounded Guy up at the scene of the crime. He is seconded by Sergeant Hot-Temper, who lives up to his billing by torturing suspects and, on a whim, murdering a fellow jail-mate of Guy’s by shooting him in the face. If Ibrahim and Hot-Temper are a law unto themselves, they are also two sides of the coin of state control at street level (a very poor coin indeed, soiled and rubbed out and dropped in a gutter), namely: muscle and management. For, while Hot-Temper does the dirty work, Ibrahim writes self-exonerating, half-true reports and takes endless calls from one of the higher-ups in the police chain of command, whose demands for progress on the nightclub murder are shrill and unrelenting, but who is also more interested in the correct outcome than the right one.
Ibrahim is corrupt, world-weary, put upon and inured to the extreme violence of his Fire-for-Fire crew, but somehow he also wallows pleasurably in the art of solving cases. Although suspicious of and irritated by Guy, and wistfully enamored of Amaka, he joins them on a trail that leads to the Victoria Island door of one Chief Ebenezer Amadi, and the gruesome horrors that lie behind it.
On the way, the novel detours through backstory scenes of extreme venality, compliments of both the throbbing industriousness of Lagos’ criminal element and of Adenle’s talent for conjuring up the kind of one-dimensional characters that successful crime fiction depends on. Not just crime fiction: Herman Melville, reading this novel, would have found common cause with Adenle in the beauty of choosing perfect nicknames for persons of imperfect character, as he did with Ginger Nut, The Grub-man, Nippers and Turkey in ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’. In Easy Motion Tourist, you ride with Knockout and Go-Slow, two scruple-free incompetents whose schemes bizarrely often succeed; you enter the house-cum-brothel of Catch-Fire, a deeply-unsavoury character who works on the supply side for Chief Amadi; you dodge bullets with Chucks, a chop-shop operator; and you listen to The Voice, the anonymous puppet master directing Chief Amadi’s activities.
Each moment with these characters provides Adenele with an opportunity to contrast Nigeria’s various moral bankruptcies—the chief of which seems to be that it is a society, like many others around the world, predicated upon the transactionality of flesh and blood above all other human considerations—with the diligent, profit-free work of Amaka, who is as meticulous in her methods as the great Jules Maigret. (In an interview, Adenle professed admiration for the fictional French commissaire.) Not that she’s a detective or private eye in the classic dictates of the genre—but many detectives and private eyes could take lessons from her. Her tiny operation, called Street Samaritans, runs—clash of modernities alert!—on Microsoft Excel. She keeps the details of as many johns as possible in her database, which is updated constantly, and referred to when sex workers call her on any one of several unregistered SIM cards—ideally before they get into a car with an unfamiliar client. The man’s HIV status, his sexual proclivities—his number of wives: it’s all there in Amaka’s little black laptop, helping her counsel the women phoning in whether to turn the trick or not. Amaka, in short, is the one giving the green light in Lagos’ red light district.
5.
The crime that Amaka and Guy get caught up in goes far beyond prostitution and murder, and as they work their way—sometimes together, sometimes separately—toward Chief Amadi’s dark secret, the novel gains a new urgency. It takes a few pages before you realise why: Adenle has subtly introduced elements of the police procedural into the final third of his book, with Ibrahim playing a suddenly more pivotal role as he marshals resources to keep tabs on Amaka and Guy, and draw the net close around Chief Amadi.
This is a wholly refreshing change of pace, and a necessary reminder that the caprice of the corrupt state can occasionally work in your favour. When Ibrahim <
Partly, this satisfaction derives from elements external to Easy Motion Tourist: it goes back to the clash of modernities, and to the fact that novels are more than the sum of their discrete storylines. Adenle, it seems, has taken it upon himself to breathe new life into an old-fashioned form of fiction, and succeeds on his terms, which, it so happens, are African terms. It falls within African literature’s purview, then, to have charge of police procedurals as much as it has charge of other genres—magical realism, say, or ‘women’s fiction’, or LGBTQI+ pulp. It may come as a surprise to some that this state of literary affairs will come as a surprise to many. The panache with which Adenle opens new avenues for crime fiction, however, coupled with the deftness with which he sketches a mystery according to the genre’s classic conventions, makes the conclusion that Africa is part of crime fiction’s vanguard irresistible.
Especially when the fiction is this good. For the satisfaction that Easy Motion Tourist delivers derives primarily from being caught up in the story of Amaka and Guy, who are, in turn, caught up in tumult of Lagos. The novel’s penultimate scene, in which Inspector Ibrahim mulls over the different ways he could begin his report—what to put in, what to leave out?—and pauses for two phone calls, one with his boss, the other from an unregistered SIM, constitutes a top-class spinetingler of a conclusion. The closing, scene, meanwhile—this time Amaka’s on the phone with an unknown number (MTN, there, to the last!)—happily points to a second book in the series.
But don’t get ahead of yourself: this is the modern crime novel you’ve been looking for. It’s a pearler of a debut. Go on, get lost in Lagos with Amaka and Guy.
•Ben Williams is the Publisher; follow him on Twitter
Review: 'Easy Motion Tourist' by Leye Adenle
Published in 2016 by Cassava Republic Press
Published in 2016 by Cassava Republic Press
Crime is a genre defined by a particular set of recognisable elements that may fall either side of the creativity line: hackneyed trope or exciting subversion. Firmly in the latter category, <
Leye Adenle
Adenle is, by his own words, a lifelong fan of crime thrillers, stating particular devotion to James Patterson’s Alex Cross series. Because Adenle is an enthusiastic reader of the genre as well as a writer, the language of this novel gallops through the chapters with an energetic joy. Adenle, the grandson of a former Oshogobo king, is also a proudly African writer (and occasionally an actor). The title of Easy Motion Tourist, Adenle’s first novel, is taken from a Highlife song by King Sunny Ade and the sounds and sensations of Lagos illuminate the pages with heat, music, and movement.
The novel opens with a prologue, introducing us to Florentine and what she is not: not actually named Florentine, not thriving at school, not rich, and “not brought up to sell her body.” The prologue leaves Florentine in the Harem, a sort of sex club for the rich and powerful, with no idea where she is (she was blindfolded during the journey) and the vague hope of making a million Naira. Florentine does not feature again in this novel, but we eventually learn of her fate. <>
Although the story alternates between the narratives of various characters, only one relates his story to us directly, in the first person. Guy Collins is a white British lawyer-turned-journalist who finds himself in Lagos to report on the upcoming election. Pining for ex-girlfriend Mel, a Nigerian woman now pursuing a successful career in the UK, Guy is eager to prove - to himself perhaps as much as Mel - that he is capable of something more than the sheltered, public-schoolboy existence he’d lived so far. And so he goes out into the Lagos night, alone, exactly as he’d been advised not to do. Things go wrong very quickly. A disturbance outside is revealed to be the horrific sight of a woman’s body - a sex worker - dumped into a ditch, violently relieved of her breasts. Before he can act on his growing sense of unease, Guy is picked up by the police and taken back to the station by Inspector Ibrahim; a cop who takes bribes but still wants to catch the bad guys. Guy grows more and more alarmed, witnessing police violence, coercion, and even murder at the station. Seemingly unable to wiggle himself out of the situation, salvation comes suddenly in the form of Amaka, a smart, sexy, mysterious lawyer. Guy is hooked, even when it becomes evident that Amaka’s rescue comes with ulterior motives.
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The story is told from the point of view of a number of characters, including Guy, Inspector Ibrahim, and low-level goons such as Catch-Fire or the recognisable tall and short duo of Knockout and Go Slow. But it is Amaka who drives forward the plot in her careful, calculated quest to expose the ring of criminals responsible for the mutilated and missing sex workers. Although Guy does, in the end, get his knight-in-shining-armour fairytale moment, <
There’s a lot to dive into with Easy Motion Tourist. The reader ventures deep into the criminal world of Lagos, where ambition and fear go hand in hand and friend turns against friend without hesitation. The sex workers populate the pages and the streets, in varying degrees of anonymity. Their work is portrayed unromantically, as the only viable option, though one dogged with violence and death. Adenle’s own first experience with a sex worker, recounted in this essay, is echoed again and again, as we dip into the circumstances and experiences of young women who are dismissed, abused, and tossed aside by men with money and power. One sex worker, Kevwe, recalls a raid in which to avoid arrest she lost her night’s earnings paying police bribes and was forced to perform a sex act on an officer. “She had not been able to eat with the hand for two days” - it is intimate, dirty, yet banal details like this that give Easy Motion Tourist an understated ruthlessness. In a city and novel where prostitution is almost mundanely prevalent, these stark moments remind readers with an emotional blow of the humanity of these women. Meanwhile, outside of the filth and desperation on the streets, another Lagos shows itself: the extreme wealth of the residents of Victoria Island. Bribes exchange hands and the protection of image is valued above the lives the poor. Straddling these two Lagos, intertwining them in a sinister intimacy, are the police and the criminals they pursue.
Guy Collins, our somewhat naive sometimes-narrator, offers Western readers a familiar pair of eyes through which to view Adenle’s portrayal of Lagos. The outsider-as-observer is an established narrative technique, but Adenle makes it something more. Guy’s bias, his assumptions, his inability to see beyond the end of his own nose, become our bias and lay the ground for a twist that satisfies the crime thriller’s need for a reveal, and delivers an important message to the white Western reader. The corruption and violence of Lagos, (indeed of Nigeria and Africa more generally) is not isolated from the corruption and violence of the rest of the world. To the contrary, it is the blood that pumps through all our societies, keeping exploitation and inequality alive.
But this is a crime thriller, and, though we end with a cliff-hanger, ultimately resolution is provided: the bad guys get their just desserts, a romance is satisfied, and the good guys come out on top. With cocaine-fuelled shoot-outs, dangerous seductions, and devastating secrets, Easy Motion Tourist is a suspenseful, delightful, and thought-provoking read.
Written by Lesedi Vine
May 26, 2017
TBBNQ Reads: Easy Motion Tourist By Leye Adenle
Reviews
BY TOBI
Image: Zaynab
Image: Zaynab
The 48 hours after reading Easy Motion Tourist are somewhat similar to that of the entirety of the book - that is, a perpetual rush of emotions for both the characters and (now) the reader. In what starts off as an official trip and perhaps a hopeless bid for self-validation and/or actualisation, Guy Collins - a British wannabe journalist - voluntarily arrives Lagos to cover an election story. Like a kid who waves a hand through a fire to see if it burns, Collins sets out to discover the night life in Victoria Island, Lagos — or crudely, to find black loving.
Collins quickly learns that Lagos not only burns with a devouring intensity, with greed and poverty as oxidant and fuel, but also fiercely consumes. By virtue of his failure to adhere to his manual on residing in Nigeria - in other words, by being present and simultaneously videoing - Collins is caught in the middle of a crime scene: a mutilated naked female body found in a gutter, and thus assumes the position of a lead in the investigation that shapes the main plot of the novel.
In interchanging narratives - which I loved - told by an unknown narrator and Collins, the author, Leye Adenle, eases the latter and the reader into the underground economy in Nigeria; one “where sex and perversion [are] mixed freely with violence and death.” Amaka - a fierce, sexy and intelligent lady with a phenomenal awareness of self - commands the attention of the reader as she unveils this pervasiveness, and the sophistication of the Nigerian sex work industry from the second chapter.
The Chase
The author’s solid characterisation and the rawness in imagery allows for another central theme - the trade of humans-for-money - to be explicitly explored. Chief Amadi - a prominent and affluent Lagos ‘big boy’ - introduces this line of business to Catch Fire, who in turn, reels in Knock Out and Go Slow by the hook of desperation. This tag team of headhunters - widely reminiscent of the network involved in the famous Otokoto hotel, which the author also references - are driven by their quest to make quick bucks.
Unlike Amadi, these other characters are careless enough to leave the trails that open up the same investigation Collins is webbed into by Inspector Ibrahim. What unfolds is a crime story woven into the fabric of Lagos; in the same way in which the paths of Amaka and Collins align. The moments of intense suspense are, however, balanced with the right amount of humour: from HotTemper’s irrationality and Collin’s naïvety. Not for once did it feel like there was anything missing - I mean, just Amaka’s sass was enough to keep a reader on alert!
Dark Cracks and Plaques Of Righteousness
Doubling as a prostitute on ‘assignment’ and a guardian angel to sex workers, Amaka offers a different perspective to prostitution in Nigeria. The author does a good job in creating a voice for the females involved in this shadow economy, by telling their own stories. The reader is also exposed to the hierarchy of risks involved in prostitution: from being arrested, to being physically abused (Florentine), to the extreme of being the subject of ritual killings.
Adenle, in writing these stories, gives a fictional push for the legalisation of sex work. Considering the violence against these women, this subtly becomes an idea that lingers in the mind of the reader. Amaka’s role of maintaining a database of all ‘customers’ and her network of female workers seemingly becomes valid; forcing one to adopt a new lens to these women - humans, first, then vulnerable (but not illegal) labourers.
Though I found this interesting, I did tire of the references to choice, in pertinence to prostitution. I found that the feminisation of poverty and the lack of agency and voice stringed with the narratives on sex work was conflicting. I grappled with the idea that all sex workers are victims of the socio-economic conditions and secondly, that choice and poverty are mutually inclusive. To some extent, the former massively contributes to the motives for engaging in sex work, but does this really erode choice?
Hover around the charts below for statistics.
Educational Attainment
Primary Education
Secondary Education
Above Secondary Education
No Education
Motives Of Engagement
Money
Lack Of Financial Support From Family
Sexual Satisfaction
Death Of Spouse
Data (In %) Based On Study By Fawole and Dagunduro, Conducted In Abuja.
Source: Olufunmilayo Fawole and Abosede Dagunduro, 2014. Research paper here.
In a survey on 305 female sex workers (results illustrated above) in Abuja, Fawole and Dagunduro found a link between socioeconomic factors and motives for engaging in the Nigerian sex industry. What is actually more gripping is the fact that 74.7 percent had at least started secondary education. In this study and another conducted in Lagos in 1990, unemployment and financial limitations, and broken homes (50 percent) and poverty (18.67 percent), were respectively noted. Exogenous factors as a precept for sex work? This, I understand.
Notwithstanding, I do question (amicably, too) the proposition that “for them [Adenle referring to sex workers in Easy Motion Tourist], prostitution was not a choice, […] [but] a lack of choice.” That is, “they had all been forced into that life when the ran out of choices.” Florentine, who had previously been taken care of by her aunt, however deliberately substitutes this for independence. This, in line with Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street’s Sisi, alludes to an element of choice, however marginal, in prostitution.
Another assumption tied to ‘choice’ is the argument that women previously assaulted are subservient and more susceptible to selling their bodies. Not only does this study negate this argument by showing that only 20 percent of sex workers had previously been raped, Amaka - who was sexually assaulted at young age - is depicted to have made a decision in selecting her line of business. One could however argue that Amaka - unlike the other ladies and Aunty Baby - was ‘shielded’ by wealth and education, and thus, cannot be compared.
Poetic Injustice
This, in no way, subtracts from the sheer brilliance of Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist. The truth is: walking a quarter a mile in their shoes could drastically change one’s perspective. I appreciate the author’s argument and even more, the fact that he makes each character so real. He shows that Knock Out, Chief Amadi, ‘Rose’ and Chief Ojo are among us, and the reality of Nigeria’s underground economy, which we ignore. We, however, probably seldom hear about them in-house, unless they sip through the crack, and into the arms of international media.
In this sense, the reader is exposed to the tug of war between power and justice. One in which virtue is punished and viciousness is rewarded; integrity is awarded with early retirement, whereas those who are to protect are the backbones to those who devour the country. This poetic injustice is subtly noted amid the author’s kind portrayal of a highly effective Nigerian Police Force, intelligence unit and responsive intensive care unit — the three of which Nigerians long for.
Oh, if only Adenle’s words were horses, pigs would fly!
Dear Leye
My letter to the author.
<
Though I have largely focused on the discourse on choice and the lack of it in prostitution, this does not change the fact that Easy Motion Tourist is easily one of my favourite reads, so far, this year! The palpitation that followed the twists were unbearable — especially from chapter 50! This book, I tell you, is guaranteed to leave one heart broken, with heart-in-mouth, or both. I, however, take joy in knowing that my healing is coming in its sequel - When Trouble Sleeps - in 2018. This makes the book an exception to “the rule” - that is, an ‘ex’ worthy of reconciliation.
Dear Leye Adenle,
You were made for this - do not stop.