´Befriend the First Lady. Buy her purple things. Purple bags, purple Benzees, purple houses in France. Depends how much you want it´.



Set in Africa´s largest city, Welcome to Lagos is a tragi-comical take on the ambiguity of a corrupt system made of and supported by people with loose loyalties. Among them, the Sancho Panzas of kindness, like the protagonists of the book: the two Army desertors, Fineboy, Oma and Isoken. When they caught the fugitive minister of Education Remi Sandayo, who took with him 4 million dollars from the fund dedicated to schools, they decide instead to use the money for the school that were deprived from being funded.

The journalist Ahmed Bakare the founder of the Nigerian Journal, the son of a proeminent representative of the oil Minisrty, who left behind a business career in London to pursue his media dreams in his home country, is also a dreamer, as he expects to save both his newspaper and his journalistic honour by interviewing Sandayo.

But the laws of corruption operate similarly everywhere and there is no place for innocents and dreamers. Ironically, the naive outsiders rarelly make the right distinction between the real vilains and the real god-doers. Ambiguity, cruelty and irony are often part of the everyday perception of people leaving under corrupt systems: the scale of values is reversed, morality is contextual and choices are dictated by social pressure and accidental circumstances. It can happen in Nigeria, in the Balkans, in the Middle East, but it affects/corrupts at the same extent the humanity of the people living under such conditions.

Largely inspired by real persons and facts - the 234NEXT who shot down after two years of publication in 2011, for instance, served as an inspiration for the Nigerian journal - Welcome to Lagos has an big cast of characters, utterly human and entertaining, yet tragical sometimes in their loneliness. They have a dream or two, or they just saw so much injustice and aim at something different, but did they know that the best way to get away with your dreams is in a big city? ´Lagos was a jungle, an orderly ecosystem with a ranked food chain, winners and losers decided before they were born´.

Welcome to Lagos is a window to a world where the sense of humour and weird irony help to survive when nothing is left for countering the unbearable heaviness of the bribes. Nigerian-born, England-based Chibundu Onuzo found the right voice to express this unique story.

This book was hard to get into and I had trouble keeping the characters straight at first but it was worth the effort. An absorbing story set in Nigeria about people trying to do the honourable thing, even though that might get them killed.

Cracking story. Interesting characters. Well written. Worth reading.

I did not receive this book so I cannot review it.

I couldn't get into this book, unfortunately. I may give it another go in the future!

Army officer Chike Ameobi is ordered to kill innocent civilians in the line of duty. Instead he deserts followed by one of his privates Yemi. They decide to head towards Lagos, the vibrant capital city of Nigeria that it is easy to get ‘lost’ in. On route they accidentally collect 3 other runaways – Fineboy, full of bravado but disillusioned with the brutality of the militia, Isoken, a teen girl who may or may not have just been raped by Fineboy’s group of rebels and Oma, a trophy wife running from her abusive husband.

Just after they arrive in Lagos a political scandal erupts. The education minister, Chief Sandayo, has just disappeared and so have millions of dollars supposed to go to schools. When the group find the Chief unexpectedly they have to decide what to do with him – and the missing money.

What follows is a novel about all the different colours of the soul. Hope, despair, morality, corruption, greed, violence, love, friendship, betrayal – you name it, it’s in here. That might make it sound like the book is a big fat mess! But actually it isn’t, like every city there is a structure holding everything in place. Yes there are moments when it looks like everything is going to spiral out of control, but like a juggler on a street corner Onuzo looks like she’s going to drop all the balls, but at the last minute catches them all with a sly, comedic wink.

Her characters are excellent, each voice separate and quickly unmistakeable. I would have liked longer with each of them and to have had more time to delve into their backgrounds, but it is not always possible to juggle balls in slow motion. I feel here that I must mention our novelists age – she is 26 – just 26!!! To have written something this good at her age, that understands emotions like being a disappointment to your grown-up child (amongst oh-so-many other things) is extraordinary!

This gets 4.5 bites from me – but I am sure that I’ll be awarding this author 5 bites in the future!

NB I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in return for an honest review. The BookEaters always write honest reviews

Just as I'd imagine the city of Lagos, filled with unique people and colourful stories. As the small group travels to the city together, their dubious welcome becomes a part of their journey. Onuzo's prose draws the reader into these stories and makes you feel like you are walking the streets of Lagos. Lovely, exciting writing and I look forward to more by this young author.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

What can I say about this book? It's full of people, the way I can imagine streets of Lagos are full of people with so many different stories. Welcome to Lagos is a story of seven different people, each of them running away, escaping their past, looking for new home in Lagos. Seven people whose lives intersect on a bus to Lagos and from then on, they stay together and share an extraordinary journey. Common goal can bring all sorts of people together.

The main focus of the group is Chike, leader of the group. He's moral struggles are the ones we're often faced with. He is the honest one among dishonest, among those who do not think if their actions are immortal, they just do what everyone else is doing, and they try to do it fist to gain the most. Part of the story line focuses on corruption in politics, it shows how badly it impacts disenfranchised citizens of Nigeria. Story gives us how hard it is to be honest, hard-working citizen when the country is turned against you. If you don't know someone, if you cannot talk yourself into something, hustle your way up, your honesty and hard work may be for nothing. It's always heartbreaking to see that some people, no matter how good and decent they are, just don't have the opportunity to prosper. The contrast between wealthy Nigeria and the poor Nigeria is enormous, but people are just people, no matter how wealthy they are. And this novel shows us, in some way, that we put too much value in money, and too little in people.

Welcome to Lagos was in moments hard to read, because the characters use all the different languages, they speak in Pidgin which was hard for me to understand sometimes, but I think I didn't lose so much of the story because I didn't fully understand some conversations. I had an e-ARC version of the book, and it didn't feature any translations, I don't know if the final version has those translations. It didn't bother me much, but I know some people don't like that in books.

It was a great read, however it was very slow at the beginning. There was little action, I was struggling to get into the story. It only really started to pick up when the team was joined by the infamous politician, and then journalist. It all started to take shape and I got more interested. I liked how the Nigeria was portrayed in the story, it was different view than I got from reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie books. I've never been to Nigeria, so books is all that shaped my view of the country, and I'm definitely curious to learn more.

Welcome to Lagos. Is there a city in the world that offers a more improbable welcome?

This is a comic satire on the corruption, poverty and violence of modern Nigeria. We see all of Nigeria’s ills paraded through the lens of Chike and Yemi, soldiers who have deserted in disillusionment at being asked to torch a village and shoot the fleeing villagers. With no plan, they head into the jungle, rescue a couple of runaways (a chancer called Fineboy and a young woman called Isoken) and head off for Lagos. Along the way, they pick up three more runaways. Collectively, in spite of each other, they end up on a venture to create a better city.

The novel contrasts the wealth and the poverty in Nigeria. On the one hand, we see the wealthy ruling class, living off oil revenues and graft, buying multiple mansions around the world. And then we have people living in shanties, under bridges, fishing and bathing in human waste. We have those sent off to study internationally contrasted with those in rural areas in schools with no equipment and whose teachers seldom bother coming in to work.

Our heroic seven span this spectrum of wealth and education. They are thrown together by circumstance and unlikely plot twists enable them to sample life at each of their different levels. They adjust to their rapid changes of fortune with varying degrees of success, but in the process they have to re-base their opinions of one another.

The novel proceeds at a lively pace. There are short chapters, led, in the middle section of the novel, by articles snipped from the Nigerian Journal. These touch on the subsequent chapters with greater or lesser degrees of obliqueness, often displaying the kind of folksy wonder at modern technology. There is a fair use of Nigerian language – probably both Yoruba and Igbo, but I am no expert. And some of the English language dialogue is written in Nigerian pidgin. This can be disconcerting at first, but after a while it just becomes part of the fabric.

The reader is given a good Cook’s tour of Lagos and the wider Niger delta, visiting different neighbourhoods, villages, international hotels, offices and mansions. It creates a picture of a vibrant, multi-cultural union of nations, full of surprises and way more colourful than non-Nigerian readers might expect. Whilst the individual characters of the novel may be a bit cartoony, together they combine to create a city (and a nation) that is complex and three dimensional; viewed from multiple perspectives. It is almost a character in its own right and fully justifies the title of the novel.

Welcome to Lagos.

I am grateful to Fabers and Netgalley for sending me an advance review copy.

The intensity of the human spirit roams free throughout these pages as the lowly wrestle the mighty in this epitome of a present-day parable.

How this diverse city can generate such wildly contrasting ways of existence is undoubtedly outrageous: power, wealth, the highly questionable morals VS squalor, resilience, and a yearning to forge a better path.

Regardless of any perceived hierarchy there is an impossible level of expectation to achieve, which continually falls under scrutiny by their peers and even themselves.

A handful of individuals are plucked from the bustling hive of the population to play a part in this fascinating story. As they travel to Lagos for their own reasons their unique journeys merge until they grasp a way of living, however vital or crude, relying on each other’s strengths to help them endure events along the way.

Through the primitiveness of their situations and by embracing a stilted camaraderie, the layers of these assorted life escapees are gradually peeled away to reveal characters as remarkable and bright as any star in the sky. Yet these unlikely political renegades don’t want to light the entire world, preferring to keep their heads down and silently hold a candle in the dark to comfort others.

When their paths cross unexpectedly with that of an unwilling benefactor, the tale develops an unconventional Robin Hood touch (a political thief and his band of not so merry men and women...) and none of them could have imagined the affect their anonymous intervention could have and the attention it would attract. But in this territory victories are often short-lived and sacrifice is inevitable.

"Welcome to Lagos" is a curious and eye-opening read told with a pureness and honesty that perfectly expresses heartbreak, hope and most of all an admirable perseverance when all seems lost. The brusque dialogue in regional dialect is mesmerising, as were passages so breathtakingly abrupt I have nothing but the utmost respect for how astonishingly effective they were.

What a wonderful writer Chibundu is, who certainly seems to have researched before putting pen to paper. This book is so powerful and heart wrenching, I cried. Each of the seven main characters who are thrown together have a story to tell and boy they certainly are descriptive. I cried and felt I was so lucky to live in the country I live in.

This was one truly powerful and thought provoking novel which I know will be remembered for a very long time.

4 stars

A sad indictment of morality or lack of it in Nigeria

Chike Ameobi is an army officer in Nigeria but when he is ordered to kill innocent civilians he decides he can no longer remain a soldier and together with one of his privates a slow witted lad called Yemi sets off to Lagos in order to try and build a new life.

During the journey he meets up with various other people running away from their previous lives, one, Fineboy, a militant, and two women, Oma haunted by an attempted rape and Isoken leaving a brutal husband.

This unlikely group of people after having to live under a bridge in terrible conditions manage to find a seemingly abandoned apartment which is luxurious compared to what they have been used to and start to find work and begin to rebuild their lives.

Unbeknownst to them, this apartment is owned by The Education Minister, Chief Sandayo, who has absconded with millions of dollars stolen from the Government and comes back to his apartment (his second home that no one knows about) to lie low until he can leave Nigeria safely. Little did he expect to meet up with Chike and his gang and he is even more concerned when they capture him and begin to use his ill-gotten gains to improve schools in the area.

Another main character is Ahmed Bakare, a local journalist who is struggling to keep his paper The Nigerian Journal up and running. When he is given the chance to run the story about Minister Sandayo, he becomes an overnight sensation attracting the attention of the BBC in England.

I will not spoil the ending of the story but I feel that the main object of this book is to try and explain how corrupt and immoral a country Nigeria is in the higher echelons of society. The author contrasts this so well when describing the terrible conditions that so many of the working class have to suffer both in the capital and throughout the country.

She is obviously a lady that knows her subject so well and the writing is very evocative and descriptive. I can only feel after reading a book like this what a sad place the world is nowadays as I am sure that the events described in Nigeria are prevalent throughout the world. This book certainly made me think and made me realise how lucky some people are when compared to so many people in the world.

Dexter

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

Chike Ameob, an army officer, decides the brutality of the Nigerian army is not for him and along with young soldier, Yemi they desert, fleeing to the city of Lagos. Along the way they meet Oma fleeing from an abusive husband, Fineboy a young rebel fighter and Isokan, a young depressed girl.
With no money they are forced to live rough under a bridge before Fineboy finds them a deserted house on a well to do complex. It is then their trouble begins.
Chief Sandayo, Minster for Education is ousted from his job and returns to his Lagos home with 10 million dollars in his back pocket, only his house is now occupied by Chike and his merry band of misfits.
Caught up in the swirl of Nigerian politics Chike, Sandayo and Ahmed a Nigerian journalist must chose between maintaining their everyday lives or exposing the corruption at the heart of Nigerian government.
Lagos and Nigeria are at the heart of this novel, exposing the good and the bad of a society split between those that have and those that have not.
The characters all seem to represent the differing aspects of Nigerian society, the poor, the abused, the young, the rebel and so on. The greatest skill is the authors ability to bring together all the varying aspects and make them work together as one for their own collective good.
I thought the ending a little abrupt bu a hugely enjoyable novel.