Books I read March 30th, 2025

It could be worse.

This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organized Crime by Stephen Ellis – Ignore the pulpy picture (and the back half of the title), this is a brief but remarkably informative history of modern Nigeria as viewed through the lens of public and private corruption. I'd come across the phenomena of shrine cults in some of Wole Soyinka'a more recent work, but had no idea the degree to which it seems endemic to Nigerian society.

The Other Name: Septology I-II by Jon Fosse – An old painter in a house in rural Norway, yes, isolated from society, yes, except for a few friends with similar names very closely narrates a day and a half in his life, yes, but without periods, no, one long run on sentence about driving places and making sandwiches and painting things and the horrifying beauty of human existence, yes, and God, oh yes, lots about God, and light, lots about light and about God, yes, and about life, yes, and identity yes, the blunt,sincere prose and rhythmic effects of which after several hundred pages is effective, yes, even evocative, although I am the sort of disappointed atheist who finds intelligent books about God to be comfort, yes, even though I can't ever really make myself believe that there is anything out there or even in here, yes, in the very tiny corners and the narrow spaces between things, no, where Fosse sees God I see nothing, not anything at all, no, but still yes it is nice to spend a few hours yes with someone who sees something else, something kinder, and can give that to you yes I'll read the next one

Digging Stars by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma – Afrofuturist campus fantasy.

Sojourn by Amit Chaudhuri – A man in a foreign city begins to lose track of his identity. Chaudhuri is an excellent writer, and this is small but well-crafted work.

The Free-Lance Pallbearers by Ishmael Reed – Reed's debut novel is a nightmarish, slapstick satire of 60's America, an impossibly surreal send-up of politics, history and racial relations. I really like Reed's early stuff, it's funny and horrifying..