“The Road to the Country”: A War Novel About Brotherhood, Friendship https://ift.tt/8KvHEVN
Chigozie Obioma’s triumphant latest novel, The Road to the Country, is a war novel that balances an expected amount of bloodshed with a surprising level of love.
As The Road to the Country opens, Obioma plants readers in Nigeria during the 1960s to tell the story of a young man named Kunle. Kunle, we learn, feels immense guilt because of an accident that injured his brother, Tunde. From early on, we see how this guilt weighs on Kunle – how it shapes and haunts him. In fact, this feeling is so immense that he doesn’t even realize a war has begun in his immediate surroundings. To make matters worse, Tunde goes missing, and Kunle decides he must set out to find and save him.
Kunle is captured, but instead of being killed, he receives the offer to fight. From here, the novel opens itself into a larger journey narrative. We see how the Nigerian Civil War will unfold, but we also witness Kunle’s own personal story progress, too – his quest for redemption and acceptance.
It’s important to note the significant impact violence has in this novel. It can be difficult to read some of these moments. Obioma, though, paints heartbreaking and absolutely tragic scenes with a poetic beauty:
He stops at a point where the vegetation turns into a tangled network of wild banana trees, the smell of something decaying and dead seeping out from among the leaves. At his approach, unseen birds lift from the trees. To his left, the forest floor yields to a pit hewn by erosion where a dead pool has formed, covered with moss and leaves, with more detritus gathered at its edges.
At other times, Obioma reflects on the general landscape of the war in a more open prose that delivers equal impact: “It all feels like a mystery written in some dark, indiscernible language.”
Whilewar is very much a focus in Obioma’s latest book, the story of Kunle also explores the value of friendship and brotherhood. We see this in Kunle’s search for his brother, certainly, but we see it most fully realized in his relationship with his fellow soldiers. At one point, with the camaraderie of his friends in his mind, he posits it’s “possible that he would choose to stay,” even if offered the option of leaving the war.
Readers familiar with Obioma’s previous novels, The Fishermen and An Orchestra of Minorities, will know that the author is an expert in balancing the very real with the magical and the mythic. This novel, thankfully, does the same, as it brings in frequent narration from a seer. There is also an unexpected detour that I won’t spoil. In this section, life and death merge, and we see Obioma’s talents in capturing the depth of mythic possibilities.
Obioma captures guilt, fear, anger, hope, and love in The Road to the Country. It’s a big and ambitious novel, and it brilliantly succeeds.
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