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 ]
A few months ago, after I picked up and devoured a beautifully written memoir by Elisa Hategan and was left with a serious Continue reading at HuffPost
[ HuffPost | 2017-01-03 15:48:11 UTC ]
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