Scrolling below: books written by the British Nigerian writer, Nduka Onwuegbute.
For a writer who has a wide range of style and subject matter like Shakespear, you would expect Onwuegbute to extol the father of modern English literature. But he doesn't. Onwuegbute beleives there is too much emphasis placed on Shakespeare at the detriment of other equally literary greats. According to Onwuegbute,
More people, especially Afrricans, should be reading the works of Wole Soyinka, Bode Sowande, Ola Rotimi, Okot p'Bitek, and so on. Instead, there's a glut of Robert Ludlum, J. K. Rowling, and other hyped celebrities, who quite rightly deserve their own accolades too.
Humourist, that he is, Onwuegbute enjoys the ups and downs of "Drowned Hopes", the writings of James Hadley Chase, and some Shirly Conran.
Having grwon up in the rich story-telling traditions in rural Nigeria, Onwuegbute fuses the African oral tales by moonlight with the fiction modern literature most people today can relate to more.
Onwuegbute's writing tone has a biting undertone, tinged with satire; something which has deprived him of the opportunity to write for the Nigerian Television Authority, when he was living in Nigeria.
Fortunes of the Forgotten Forest
is testament to this re-telling of greed shown in Odinjo's character.
Nduka Onwuegbute cannot be pinned down to one type of literary genre. He has written political drama for the stage. A play that hits on the fabric of curruupt practices. He's also written novels, and short stories.
His first novel is Masters of the Confluence.
In 2011, Onwuegbute lauched himself as an educational book writer with a new book Abaci's Number Add-Ventures
, for children. But appearances can be deceptive. The book actually is a compilation of short stories with diffficulty understanding maths in word formats.
Children love reading. It fires their imagination, taking them into worlds only seen in physical or digital books. Be they hardback, or the commonly available paperback edition, books can keep children away from mischief, and certainly from the threat of television and video games.
Fortunes of the Forgotten Forest
, is Onwuegbute's forage into the world of teenage fiction. African Folklore in setting, this is an insight to some of the tales Onwuegbute heard as a child, growing up in Nigeria.
Onwuegbute's first novel was Masters of the Confluence
. Based on the exploits of slavery that went on, this book based on a history of the Onitsha Dynasy, looks at a people's zeal to free themselves from the shackles that wants to keep the status quo.
Author reviews of Onwuegbute's writing is varied. But this is hardly surprising. Onwuegbute writes for a diverse range of readers, and on a myriad of themes, and subject matters. Strange
, Powerfull
, & Wonderful Story
are all phrase to describe Onwuegbute and his writing ability. He's also been rate
This is, therefore, a book of moments. Moments of struggle, pain, violence and sadness but also joy and dreams. Hard times, but of courage. War, slavery ... and love. And then we get to the last chapters, and when we have a more complete story, that of Alabo and Anashi, we finally create a connection with his strange form of love, even though we can't fully understand how their story ends.
Masters of the Confluence
What may be seen by some readers as arbitrary results disconnected from actors is really the expression of culture through more classical language, akin to the Greek Tragic experience.
Drums That Dance in the Dark