Chike Ameobi is an officer in the army after having joined the military with a vision of helping to protect and defend his country. Welcome to Lagos begins with two soldiers in the Nigerian Army going AWOL. Largely ignored by society, they get caught up in a political scandal that threatens to upend their lives right when they finally find some degree of stability and comfort.
Instead they find themselves struggling to secure basics like employment, a place to live, and food. Read more fiction book reviews at Centered on Books.įTC Disclaimer: This book was given to me in return for a fair and honest review of the text.Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo is the story of five people from different parts of Nigerian society who flee the Niger Delta in hopes of better lives in Lagos.
Published by Catapult in May of 2018, Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo is available for purchase at your local bookstore. Though the characters often feel distant and it is hard to truly get to know any of them because of Onuzo’s panoramic perspective, Welcome to Lagos is a novel that is driven to share itself with the world. Onuzo has a unique ability to draw in readers through these themes in ways that make you forget the who of the story and instead feel rooted in its many messages. Characters are reborn in the eyes of the reader, and we watch them grow from outlaws or weak characters to commendable and ferocious leaders. Throughout Welcome to Lagos, themes of morality, forgiveness, and corruption are explored as we learn to love the characters we thought we were meant to hate. A runaway wife who is finished being abused, a young girl overcoming a battle with a newly experienced trauma, and eventually a corrupt(ish) politician are only a few of the characters in Chike’s cohort. Abandoning his post and discovering a host of unlikely characters along the way, Chike becomes the father figure to this vagabond group of Nigerians. We first meet Chike, an upright soldier who finds himself in the throes of indecision as he is told to murder an entire village. Onuzo leads readers through a thematically riveting novel as she paints a picture of Nigeria’s beauty, horror, and the perceptions of both its people and those looking in on its people. Walking in the footsteps of Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and others in the Nigerian literary canon, Chibundu Onuzo’s Welcome to Lagos is the next contemporary Nigerian novel.
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