Looking at the book from this lens, it is not so difficult to understand the temper of the work, one which, while being admirable for its bravery, lacks the much-needed freshness, nuance, and modernity that readers of 21st century Nigerian literature have become accustomed to. Welcome To Lagos, published by the UK’s Faber and Faber and the U.S.A’s Catapult, borrows (perhaps too much) from the tone of the 20th-century griot, Cyprian Ekwensi and the (in)famous era of Onitsha Market Literature. It puts pressure on everybody.”įlowing from the numerous reference points of what can be aptly termed “Lagos Literature” – Toni Kan’s Carnivorous City, Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist, and Igoni Barrett’s Blackass, among others – there is one certainty that reverberates through these works: Lagos piles pressure on everyone who lives, breathes and interacts in it.
“It is one thing to be told of the ‘informal economy’ of Lagos, and quite another to see it in action. In Teju Cole’s Everyday is for the Thief, Lagos is described thus: Chibundu Onuzo’s novel, Welcome to Lagos, is a book that manages to find room on a tight shelf full of many works of fiction set in Lagos.
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