When the Levees Break, by Edwin Okolo

Fiction Drawing inspiration from the writing of Lesley Nneka Arimah, Edwin Okolo creates a world of birth factories, colossal levees, secret labs, and New Biafra, where we find Ameli, Lotanna’s wife—because he chose her. Those colossal levees, rising from the banks of the Benue, were the features she’d grown to love best in New Biafra. Unlike the obsolete levees of past centuries, these skyward-reaching panes stood as high as her enhanced retinas could see; frosted by clouds like the rim of a giant shot glass. It was hard to tell exactly how tall each pane stood, but the rumours she’d heard, back when she lived in Nnewi Metropolis, were that they cleared the stratosphere. What was known was that they had taken over fifty years to construct, installed to forestall flooding. No one knew how the water came, or why, but it always did. According to annals of the past, the first water purge came gurgling up from the earth, burying the residents of the Benue plains in a mudslide. The second water purge came in the form of a tsunami; the third, rains that wouldn’t cease. The fourth, as predicted by the scientists who ran the secret labs stationed in forts along the coast, would be a disaster of God-like proportions. The fourth levee was thus installed, dormant in an empty moat, pinned into the earth by pneumatic pumps, waiting for God to yet again renege on his promise to never again destroy the world with water. Tourists from what was... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'

[ World Literature Today | 2021-09-13 14:09:11 UTC ]

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“In the Dream House,” Reviewed: Carmen Maria Machado’s Many Haunted Stories of a Toxic Relationship

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‘The Beautiful Ones’ isn’t the memoir Prince envisioned, but it’s a moving look at the singer’s life

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What We're Reading – October 2019

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But This Really Happened: What to Include and Leave Out of a Memoir

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A Simplistic View of a Mixed-ish America

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Lit Hub Weekly: October 21 – 25, 2019

Duras’s body of work is a reminder that it’s okay to press send, to publish your drafts.” On Marguerite Duras, proto-internet essayist. | Lit Hub Memoir “Space flight is not being powered by people doing reasonable things.” Peter Ward explores the fraught history (and inevitable future) of space... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

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Val Kilmer is releasing a memoir (!!!)

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Jenny Slate Wrote a Book-Shaped Thing. What Is It?

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Chatto & Windus wins Matt Rowland Hill memoir in eight-way auction

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Head of Zeus picks up Carson's Belfast memoir

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'Animals feared him': fake David Cameron memoir cover spotted in bookshop

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Charles Schwab takes sharper aim at Robinhood as it pursues younger clients

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Am I Allowed to Break Up with My Book Agent?

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Safran Foer’s memoir to illuminate family’s Holocaust history

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