I embarked reading this title after months of beginning it & laying it on read later. I had gotten my copy way earlier after it got released to the world.
Timing is crucial with how I choose to read books. After finishing “Land of Fetish,” a ghastly racist recount of Western African escapades… I needed to detox from the harm my mind had been subjected to. Then my journey to race through reading “An Orchestra of minorities” ensued.
The entire weekend I have been reading two books. One for business & this one. This one took precedence. And on Sunday morning, immediately I woke, it’s been my eyeballs with words off its pages that’s taken order of the day.
The narrative is captivating. Quite so, once I had passed a certain threshold of the book. I kept predicting outcomes & proven wrong one after the other. Got a few right: but missed on the major ones. And the author must have diverted from the obvious as a measure to keep readers glued to the plots as they came to life.
In doing so; Nonso suffered a horrible fate.
All the same the relatable aspects of the setting of this book makes the ever notion that “Africa is one big country” ever more truthful. To a huge extent. I could vividly imagine scenarios I could see all around growing up in different areas of Kenya & the story was based in Nigeria.
Themes tackled within this book do reverberate the plight of the black man on this globe. I think if anything made me stay for this read; this would be it. Seeing to which I didn’t like how my sentiments were eviscerated reading this tale. I hated every ounce of emotion stirred within my fiber turning pages of this book. My Chi could attest to this! (To put things in context; I do detest emotions/feelings. They lead to nothing good… Don’t trust me? Ask Nonso Solomon. That’s if you catch him.)
Without overwhelming the reader to this excerpt; my only critic would be the POV of the narrator(Chi) to this story. I didn’t like this type of narration at all. But, this is out of preference… First person narratives carry more weight in my books. It shows & doesn’t tell. Keeps things crisp & flowing easily unlike the metadata one sifts through in this book to get on to the narrative. Sorry Obioma. I had to be honest with that one. All in all, I’m proud of the author for telling this story. Definitely worth a read.
Parting shot remark; in all my life, a few decades – less than 3 – I’ve never seen such an ingenius title. I was so happy when I read the section of the book that revealed why it was so… Like chill bro, that’s just brilliant.