This is about Nigeria. Lagos Nigeria. It is about the people who live there and the culture and language that has arisen there from time immemorial, being created, generation after generation, as the evolution of any group. It is about the sea, about the animals and creatures, great and small, that live and eat and die in and around Lagos and its adjoining water. It is about aliens, and a first contact between that group and humanity…But it is more, and Okorafor has crafted it to be more. It is about the gods and legends and myths and history of the Nigerian people. It is about humanity, what we want, who we are, and how we try, feebly and incompletely to put it all together.
Goodreads Reviews
3.6 rating based on 8,659 ratings (all editions)
ISBN-10: 1444762753
ISBN-13: 9781444762754
Goodreads: 18753656
Author(s): Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 4/10/2014
When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself… from itself.
Told from multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself.
‘There was no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And there was no pain. It was like being thrown into the stars.’