Mogbolahan a Koya-oyagbola

Some White English Women I've Almost Known: Fourteen Short Stories, Five Poems About Exile Mogbolahan a Koya-oyagbola

A collection of short stories and poems about exile, Some White English Women I've Almost Known covers much ground, from a nostalgic look at the travails of life as a struggling England based Nigerian university student in the first story "Some White English Women I've Almost Known" which the collection is named after, to "Countdown," in which a suicidal Japanese woman forms a precarious bond with her equally psychically fragile Nigerian teacher. The sweeping span of "Mr Isaiah" covers a period of two decades of middle class decline through the reminiscences of its narrator. Incumbent fragility which accompanies absolute surrender to love is explored in the poem "Odysseus to Penelope Queen of Ithaca" while in the elegiac "Fade to Black" the protagonist struggles to choose between the serenity of the predictable single life and the excitement and uncertainty which are part and parcel of relationships. Lurching from gritty realism to playful and surrealist fantasy tinged stories, this eclectic collection is difficult to neatly categorise. Do you like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera? Then this might be right up your street.

Reviews

"Koya-Oyagbola cuts through the under-explored territory of middle class Nigerians in this audacious, globetrotting debut about straying fathers and aimless sons." Sefi Atta, award winning author of Everything Good Will Come