Tanure Ojaide

Stars of the Long Night is a storytelling dance. Instead of taking the straightest path, it dances round and round, in and out, taking the reader here and there, past and present, myth and reality, to create not just a narrative of a people who are first expecting, then planning and celebrating a festival, but a whole cultural education for the reader.

I'm not sure when this book is set, pre-colonial times, it seems. The Okpara people of this story live in the Niger Delta in the region of show more Agbon, a collection of smaller communities. It is expected that the people will be celebrating the Edjenu festival this year, a festival that only comes around once every 30 years or so. Indeed the festival is the riveting climax of the book. Along the way we are introduced to many interesting Okpara people but we are also taken on many storytelling excursions into history and myth.

I really enjoyed this book, which is so incredibly rich in cultural details. It's almost as if the author felt he needed to get this all down or the story of the Okpara people would be lost. The narrative "dance" is perfect for the story it has to tell, so much so, that when you finally get to the dancing at the festival you feel you have been practicing for it like everyone else. Like most, I'm accustomed to mostly straightforward, linear narratives, so the digressions (are they digressions?) made me impatient at times, but no more than with some of those infuriating Victorian narrators, or post-modern/modern narratives I've read. This is another book that readers of the Nigerian diaspora should not miss. show less