Chigozie Obioma has had a highly successful career as an author: he has published two novels, both of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and has won around a dozen other awards.
But writing was a second choice for him, he said: His first dream was to play football.
Born the fifth of 12 children to Igbo parents in the southwestern Nigerian city of Akure, Obioma watched Argentine star Diego Maradona play at the 1990 World Cup and decided to follow in his idol's footsteps, starting training near a mosquito-ridden swamp.
This, he says, led to repeated bouts of malaria and long periods of bedridden recovery, during which his parents regaled him with stories from local folklore and books such as “The Palm Wine Drinker” by Amos Tutuola.
“My love for writing began to blossom,” he says. “As my imagination expanded, I realized that what I most wanted was to write.”
From that moment on, even as his classmates pursued more predictable careers like law, engineering and medicine, Obioma never wavered in his quest to become a writer.
“None of them became the person they always said they wanted to be, and somehow I became that weird person,” he said over chili goat soup at Dept. of Culture, a Nigerian restaurant in Brooklyn. “I'm so grateful that I'm living a dream that I thought was crazy at the time.”
His next book, “The Road to the Country,” about young men fighting on the Biafran side in the Nigerian civil war that saw the seceded but ultimately conquered Biafra region in the southeast, is scheduled for publication by Hogarth Press on June 4.
Growing up in a large family wasn't always comfortable for Obioma, who was more reserved than his siblings. But after moving to Northern Cyprus to attend university, he found himself blessed with a close-knit family. That realization led to his 2015 debut novel, The Fishermen, a tale of four Nigerian brothers whose lives are turned upside down by a madman's prophecy.
“I first read the manuscript of The Fishermen on the London Underground and was enthralled,” says Elena Lapin, one of the editors at Little, Brown, which published Obioma's first two novels. “I missed the train several stops because I was instantly transported to his family home in a Nigerian village. You immediately sense the bond between the boys and the tensions in their loving but complicated relationship.”
Obioma's writing process always starts with the characters. He says he finds the psychological evolution and transformation of characters fascinating. The plot comes later and is a function of the characters. After pondering the situations of various characters for several months, he begins writing the story.
Obioma's second novel, The Orchestra of Ethnic Minorities, was published in 2019 and is inspired by Homer's The Odyssey. It tells the story of Chinonso, a farmer who leaves Nigeria to study at a university in Northern Cyprus in search of a better life for the woman he loves. The story is dedicated to a fellow Nigerian friend who shared a similar background to the character and died in an accident in Cyprus. The story takes the reader on a journey into culture and spirituality.
His latest novel, “The Road to the Country,” also delves into the world of myth and is inspired by real events – the conflict that erupted in July 1967 between northern and western Nigerian tribes and the Igbo people, who sought to secede and establish the state of Biafra.
Edited by Ira Ahmed and David Ebershoff, the novel tells the story of a half-Igbo, half-Yoruba college student from Lagos, Nigeria, who travels to Biafra in search of his brother. The student, Kunle, hitches a ride on a Red Cross van, but when he separates from the group he is captured and conscripted into the Biafran army.
Obioma began writing the book when he came to the United States in 2012 to complete a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Michigan. He researched the war through books and documents provided by the International Red Cross, which shipped food and medicine to blockaded Biafra.
He wanted his novel to portray the realities faced by soldiers on the battlefield and by civilians whose lives were changed forever, so he needed the voices of those who lived through the war. That wasn't easy, Obioma said. His questions were shunned and silenced by family and friends.
During a visit to Nigeria in 2017, Obioma's father told a close friend, the family tailor, that his son was writing about the war. The man revealed that he had been a commander in the Biafran army, something they had never discussed in their 30-year friendship. Obioma credits him with key details in the book, including many of Kunle's characterizations.
“I know it's a cliché that we don't talk about wars, especially those who fought in them, but the Biafran war is notorious for its scale,” he said, adding that an estimated one to three million people died during the conflict, “most of them from very brutal starvation.”
When Obioma told his mother about the book, she said that the story of war cannot be told by the living alone, but by the dead, too, and so the novel includes scenes of injury and death, as well as a purgatory-like place where the dead tell their stories, as Obioma's tribute to the dead.
Ebershoff, one of the editors of the new book, said blending immersive realism with elements of mysticism and folklore has become Obioma's signature style, which he said is most fully realized in “The Road to the Country.”
“It's a fascinating story,” Ebershoff said, “and that's what makes Chigozy unique.”
Obioma, a father of two and a longtime creative writing teacher, will move to the University of Georgia in the fall to become the Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor of English.
After the success of The Fishermen, Obioma was inundated with requests for advice from writers around the world. He found that the one-on-one sessions were taking up most of his time and affecting his own work. To continue supporting young writers, he co-founded the Oxbury Writers Retreat, a free eight-day program held in Greece during the summer. This year, Cameroon-born novelist Imbolo Mboue will be one of the instructors.
“I am so proud of his individuality, originality, uncompromisingness and integrity as a writer,” Mbue said. “I was blown away by his debut, in awe of his second, and now Chigozie Obioma has raised the bar even further.”