When Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who is currently heralded as the female Chinua Achebe won the Commonwealth first book award for the Africa region in 2005 for her book, “Purple Hibiscus”, most people knew that was the signal that a great writer has arisen. The Commonwealth region covers Africa, India, UK, Bangladesh, Canada and Australia and the Commonwealth award was set up ‘to encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin’.

In 2008, two Nigerian authors (Sade Adeniran and Karen Aribisila) won this award for Africa. I got the opportunity to interview Sade Adeniran on SARFMRADIO. She won the First Book Award for the African Region for 2008. Her book is self-published. It was an hour long interview in which we definitely had to clarify some of the issues that I and other readers had about her book. Again, I will like to say a big thank you to Sade for coming through because I know how pressed she was for time. I have included the non-spoiler parts of the interview, my hopes are that you will go and get the book. Enjoy the interview.

Is this book auto biographical?

No, it isn’t actually. The original book was as a result of having been made redundant as a marketing executive and it was about a revenge quest against my ex boss. It was very much like the movie 9-5 featuring Dolly Parton. But, in about 100 pages of the book, I realized that it was quite boring and the most interesting part of the book were the journal entries that I had. So I ditched everything and kept the entries. The only similarities between myself and Lola (the main protagonist in the book) is that I was a kid who went back to Nigeria and lived in the village.

I know that you based the book on a Yoruba village. Weren’t you concerned that people will take your book quite literally and believe that Yoruba people are a particular way?

That is like saying that all white people are racist. I am not a social anthropologist. I write a work of fiction it is not supposed to represent the Yoruba’s. It is just meant to be a work of fiction and that is why it is called, ‘imagine this’, that is, imagine what could happen.

Was your writing this book based on observing the plight of house helps and poorer members of an extended family?

The plight of poorer members of the family comes from the whole ideology of ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. In Nigeria and many African countries – if you have money and power, many people will flock to you because people need a little bit of help. The problem is that some people abuse these positions of trust. You hear some horror stories of kids that are brought to the U.K.

Your book touches on incest as it discusses her relationship with her uncle and how her uncle abused his position of trust. Weren’t you scared of the repercussion of putting that in the book? or the accusation that you might be breaking up the family unit by putting this big secret into the public forum via your work of fiction?

What are the repercussions? What of the damage to the child? There are customs that we have all over the world that are not that great and need to be changed. You know talking about certain things that are taboos is a start. The more you talk about it, the more it gets frowned upon, the less people will continue doing that.

How long did it take you to write this book?

It took me about five (5) years to write this book.

You use a lot of Yoruba proverbs in your book – why is that?

My love for proverbs came from my dad and when he will write me letters, he will use a lot of Yoruba proverbs and often times, I will not understand the proverbs, so I had to figure it out and I guess from figuring it out, the love grew.

What African Author is your inspiration?

I can’t necessary say that any author is my inspiration. Like most people, I read Chinua Achebe’s, “Things Fall Apart” in school. I also read Camara Laye’s, “dark child” but I really enjoyed reading ‘Zenzele – letters for my daughter’ by Ms. Maraire. My reading taste is very wide and eclectic. Another favorite of mine is the play by Ola Rotimi , “the gods are not to blame”. I hope I was able to transpose the cadence of English from that play into my book. It is fascinating how different groups of people speak the English language.

Were your family members accepting of your being an author?

(laughs) My brothers were like how are you going to pay your bills? Once, I reassured them that I will be okay, my family was fine with my decision.

We know that you are self published, what were the challenges that you faced going this route and most importantly why did you choose to go this route?

I am self published because I couldn’t get a publisher interested in my writings. I had given the manuscript to friends of mine and they were shocked at how good it was. I realized that if they like it- there must be a lot of people out there that might like the book. I had heard of an author in the UK who had gone the self published route and eventually got picked up by a publisher. So, I resigned from my job and decided to pursue writing. I learnt everything from scratch about self publishing and by the middle of the year I had about one thousand (1, 000) copies of my finished book stored under my bed. So, I started selling my books from under my bed. It was a challenge – often, I will try to sell my books and I will notice the loss of interest, once I say I am self published. For many, they wondered why a major publishing house hadn’t picked up my book if it was so good. That was truly a challenge!

Do you have any plans to try publishing else where?

Yes, I intend to publish in South Africa and Nigeria. I finally got myself an agent.

How have you found the loss of power that occurs with your moving to an agent?

I am handling it quite well. I have high hopes that my agent will get a publisher to take over some of the responsibilities. It is hard work for me without a lot of money attached to it. I rather have someone take over all that responsibility. Publishing is a business, I will rather stick to writing, though I think it is important that people understand how that part [publishing] works.

Apart from your website what other steps did you take to promote your book?

In the UK, we have black history month, so I called some of the libraries and told them that I will love to read my book at their library. After reading, a lot of people came up to me and told me that they loved the excerpt of the book that I read. Word of mouth has helped my sales as well. Often times, when one person likes the book – they pass it on to the next person and on and on. I have had to also use viral marketing via emails and my hope is that if one person likes it enough – they will recommend it to their friends and family.

What will you say is the main point of your book?

You have to look outside yourself because often someone has it worse than you do.

What words of advice will you give to any aspiring writer?

Write with passion. Write from your heart! Don’t let anyone deter you and write what you believe. Get your butt in the chair, think about what you want to communicate and just do it.

Extra:

Reading this book, I had to remind myself over and over again that this book is written from the perspective of a child. This is a must read and also a great addition to any collectors library. It is a great achievement that this self published author has gotten the accolades and critical acclaim often reserved for those who have big name publishing houses pushing their works. If we remember that the Common Wealth Award was set up to “promote new voices, reward achievement, encourage wider readership and greater literacy, thereby increasing appreciation of different cultures and building understanding between cultures” then we can say that this book has definitely done so. You can get the book from Amazon UK, Amazon USA and her website

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