Dubi reviewed Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
Review of 'Death of Vivek Oji' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
By sheer coincidence I started reading The Death of Vivek Oji right after the first time I ever read Chronicle of a Death Foretold (which I wasn't much impressed with, particularly because, having just read Love in the Time of Cholera before it, I was just about finished with Garcia Marquez's misogyny and characters who fall in love with their abusers). Soon after I started reading Vivek Oji I thought "this is what Chronicle could have been, if it loved its characters instead of hating them.
Only when I got to the acknowledgement did I find out Emezi directly cites Chronicle as a source of inspiration. So, yeah, it shows. But this one is so much better.
Set in Nigeria, primarily in Owerri, in Igboland, the story takes us back and forth in time to tell us everything about what brought about and what came out of the death of …
By sheer coincidence I started reading The Death of Vivek Oji right after the first time I ever read Chronicle of a Death Foretold (which I wasn't much impressed with, particularly because, having just read Love in the Time of Cholera before it, I was just about finished with Garcia Marquez's misogyny and characters who fall in love with their abusers). Soon after I started reading Vivek Oji I thought "this is what Chronicle could have been, if it loved its characters instead of hating them.
Only when I got to the acknowledgement did I find out Emezi directly cites Chronicle as a source of inspiration. So, yeah, it shows. But this one is so much better.
Set in Nigeria, primarily in Owerri, in Igboland, the story takes us back and forth in time to tell us everything about what brought about and what came out of the death of Vivek Oji. The book digs deep into the way hate and fear become a rot that spreads, infects, and undermines lives and love. This is as much true of homophobia and transphobia, the centre of this story, as it is of any other hate, which the book only touches on ever so fleetingly, merely recognizing the parallels - racism, misogyny, and so forth. It also does a great job in preempting any attempt to dismiss this as something that, for a reader like me in a Western country, happens "there", in "places that are different". I've never been to Nigeria, but the vivid depiction of life there makes it very clear that, while there are certainly differences in culture, this is a story about being human, and it is applicable to people everywhere. If you live in a western country and think "this could never happen here", you are so very, very wrong.
This book will rip your heart out, but then put it back in and tell you "don't forget the pain you've learned".
