#BookReview: And After Many Days by Johor Ile

Johor Ile takes us through the lives of the Utus in this astonishing debut.

It is 1995, we see dictatorship and the struggle that ensued at the start of oil exploration in some communities in the Niger Delta Region, through the eyes of this nuclear family of five. Bendic, a lawyer and Ma, a teacher, with trails of the Nigerian Civil War, are the parents of three children; Paul, Bibi, and Ajie.
Bendic lands himself the role of an advocate, as the government grabs the oil fields of Ogibah people and unleashes terror on those who dare to ask questions. Bibi and Ajie, the second and the last children of the Utus, display typical behaviours of children their age, as they argue and fight over irrelevancies. Their elder brother Paul, introverted, makes stable academic progress and would be going to the university.

The blanket of darkness that will envelop their lives and follow Bendic to his grave, arrived that day when the streets were agog with protests and swallowed Paul. Loss delivers its blow in stages and the Utus followed through with these stages. Shocked out of their disbelief and denial, the Utus grapple with the disorienting reality of losing a loved one, a loss as confounding as a disappearance; no traces, no body.
Bendic will die sometime later; Ajie will move over to the UK to study, Bibi will go to the University of Ibadan to study, while Ma remain in Port Harcourt. The truth about Paul’s death surfaces after so many years, and it is this event; the discovery of his brutal murder by the police that initiates a homecoming. “The dead will not be consoled, neither will those who live in the skin of their dead.”

Although the novel had a slow start, creeped a bit, but as soon as it gained speed, the words simply strung into each other and made a fine web that trapped the reader, and an escape from the charms of this book, impossible.

Johor Ile is a Nigerian writer, he lives in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His debut “And After Many Days”, won the 2016 Etisalat Prize for Literature.