A 2018 anthology looks at the city of Lagos through a noir filter, with a variety of results.
By Akumbu Uche
I haven’t read any of the Noir series from Akashic books but the premise of the Lagos Noir anthology (Akashic Books, 2018) had me excited. With a focus on anti-heroes and personal crises, the noir genre allows you to temporarily crossover to the dark side. I wanted to follow temperate youths unwittingly roped into crime and staying put. I wanted to see pastors and imams stare down the devil and later realize that they were looking at their own reflection all along. I wanted to read nuanced and empathetic portrayals of kidnappers, armed robbers, cultists, and drug peddlers.
Ladies and gentlemen, the title of this collection should have just read ‘Out of Lagos: Stories.’ Had it been so named, I wouldn’t have had such high expectations. There is very little noir here apart from the fact that most of these stories take place in the darkness of the night. You go know say condition dey critical when you see Nnedi Okorafor, a noted science fiction writer, submit a science fiction story to a noir anthology. More on her later but first, just in case I have the definition of the genre all wrong, here is the editor Otto Penzler in his 2009 foreword to The Best American Noir defining it for us:
“Noir works whether films, novels, or short stories, are existential pessimistic tales about people, including (or especially) protagonists who are seriously flawed and morally questionable. The tone is generally bleak and nihilistic, with characters whose greed, lust, jealousy, and alienation lead them into a downward spiral as their plans and schemes inevitably go awry… The machinations of their relentless lust will cause them to lie, steal, cheat, and even kill as they become more and more entangled in a web from which they cannot possibly extricate themselves.”
James Ellroy, the author of ‘Black Dahlia’ puts it this way: “The thrill of noir is the rush of moral forfeit and the abandonment to titillation….The overarching and lasting appeal of noir is that it makes doom fun.”
Of the 13 writers featured, only two – Chris Abani (also the editor) and Leye Adenle actually write in the genre. Their stories were okay but I don’t think they brought their A game to this project. Some may have seen the assignment as a challenge to try something new but they didn’t really deliver as in the case of Igoni Barrett who submitted a creative exercise on landlord wahala and rat poison, and for all the military terminology he exhausts on just the first page alone, his slice of life story is still not noir. Jude Dibia started off well until he retreated from an intriguing armed robber and focused instead on a policeman whose naiveté is so profound that there is no way he could have survived one week of the Nigerian Police Academy.
Editing-wise, a lot of unnecessary Americanisms like ‘cops’ and ‘college’ should have been weeded out and some fact-checking should have been introduced because while Wale Lawal’s ‘Terry Mugler’ perfume-wearing posh Lagosians is clearly a typo, I don’t understand how in the choirs ’Pemi Aguda is familiar with, men sing in the alto section and women in the tenor.
Geography was a bit of a challenge too. Chika Unigwe is clearly more at home in Enugu than any other Nigerian city, and for most of her story, her okada rider protagonist’s head and heart are in the East. The worst offender is Nnedi Okorafor. Never before has an author been so far removed from their locale. Not only is the pidgin she uses substandard but according to her, padlocks and keys are so expensive that people in face-me-I-face-you dwellings end up leaving their doors unlocked, including the ones who own diamond jewelry.
I am tempted to say that I shouldn’t have bothered but I’m glad I did because otherwise, I wouldn’t have read Adebola Rayo and Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s stories. In ‘The Swimming Pool’, Ladipo Manyika set up a scene perfect for the likes of Poirot and Benoit Blanc to investigate later. And Rayo’s psychopath protagonist in ‘What Are You Going To Do?’ Gosh, I want to read more about that character and her shenanigans. Someone should adapt it into a movie. These two were really well done. They saved me from popping a blood vessel and saved this book from being served up as a burnt-up roast.
Akumbu Uche is a Nigerian writer whose work has appeared in Bella Naija and Brittle Paper. She lives in Owerri.
