Feature Ayóbámi Adébáyò


that amasses because of them. The novel started out as a short story Adébáyò was working on while at universit in Nigeria in 2007. She says: “I had writen this scene where a couple were break- ing up, and they had a child who was in hospital. I had completed the story but I just wasn’t satisfied. I felt that there was something about it that I didn’t understand. There was something the characters were saying that I couldn’t hear. So I remember going over it again and again, [and finally I had a] sort of eureka moment, when I sort of knew, ‘Oh my god, this is what they’re actually talking about.’ Then I went back and finished the story.” Adébáyò’s realisation was that the crux of the story would concern what Yejide and Akin were not saying to each other, and how all the secrets they keep from each other drive them further apart. “[The story] came from the fact that they were having this dialogue but they were not really speaking to each other,” Adébáyò says. “That everything they were saying or wanted to say was leſt unsaid; to understand each other they would have to listen to what was not being said. I think the whole book came from that, the idea that two people spend hours talking and never quite say anything that maters because they’re both afraid.”


Great expectations


Discussing the relationship dynamics of the couple and the fears that drive them, Adébáyò says: “The tragedy of Akin and Yejide’s marriage lies in their inabilit—Akin’s in particular—to accept their flaws. Yejide is afraid that Akin is going to leave her, [and] Akin is afraid that the pressures [of the relationship will force] Yejide to start asking him questions that he can’t answer at his own pace. For him, there is a major disconnect between who he is expected to be, what he thinks he should be, and his lived realit. He never quite accepts the facts of his life and perhaps because of this he is never vulnerable enough with Yejide.”


“This was obviously something that would have a lot of impact on my decisions going forward. So I began to look into the disease and read everything I could about it. A lot of what I read didn’t make it into the novel actu- ally, but I found it remarkable that though this is some- thing that affects millions of people—directly and indi- rectly—I didn’t come across many non-scientific texts that explored the subject.”


Structural challenges


Figuring out the structure of the era-hopping novel was the “most challenging thing”, Adébáyò says, but the decision to set the novel in the 1980s was an easy one. “The ’80s are a time I’ve always found interesting: I was born in 1988 and it was a time in which so many things were happening in Nigeria. There was so much change: I had always been interested in it but I didn’t see it in fiction as much as I would’ve liked to. So I wanted to write about what it would have been like to live in this time that I believe really shaped the way Nigeria is today.”


Nigeria of 1985 is marred by coups and political turbu- lence which subtly permeates the daily lives of the char- acters, but there are also times when the effects of this political instabilit are much more overt. There is a passage in the novel when Akin urgently needs to get their child to hospital but there has been an outbreak of gunfire outside the hotel. He has to hold the baby up in the air to convince the soldiers to let him leave. Adébáyò says: “What I really wanted to look at were those points where there would be an intersection between the politi- cal and personal and how important that can be in the course of anybody’s life. People who aren’t even neces- sarily, or directly involved in politics... everything that’s happening at the centre impacts on the course of their own lives.” ×


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When Yejide eventually gives birth, her children are diagnosed with sickle cell disease, a serious blood disor- der that affects around 20%–30% of the Nigerian popu- lation. Adébáyò herself is very familiar with the disease, and describes being “both consciously and subcon- sciously preoccupied with the topic”, adding: “At [the time I was writing the book], a couple of friends, both in their early twenties, who lived with the disease died as a result of its complications. I spent a lot of time thinking about them, about some of the conversations we’d had. I also knew by then that although I wasn’t a sufferer, I did carry the sickle cell gene and if I chose to have children with another carrier, we could have children who had the disease.


The story came from the fact


that they were having this dialogue but they were not really speaking to each other... the idea that two people spend hours talking and never quite say anything that matters because they’re both afraid


13:00


Ayóbámi Adébáyò will be in conversation with Claire Armitstead, the Guardian’s books editor, today at 13:00 in a seminar at the English PEN Literary Salon.


Formats Hardback (£14.99, out now), Trade paperback (£12.99), E-book (£11.99) Rights Italian, Swedish, US rights to Knopf Editor Jo Dingley Agent Clare Alexander


15th March 2017


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