CBR15 BINGO: Africa, because the author was born in Nigeria, and the story takes place in Nigeria
Double BINGO!
Horizontal: Dwelling, Africa, Relation”ship”, Violence, On the Air
Diagonal: South America, Africa, North America, Asia & Oceania, Europe
With 20 pages left to read in Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen, I suddenly felt a dread about finishing. In spite of tragedy striking at barely the half-way mark of the novel, I still clung to the hope that things could turn out well; yet, all along, I knew it was not going to be that kind of story.
The Fishermen is about a Nigerian family, primarily four brothers close in age: Ikenna “who was nearly fifteen and on whom we relied for the interpretation of most things;” Boja, a year younger; Obembe, eleven; and Benjamin, the nine-year-old narrator. When the story begins, the boys’ father announces that he has been transferred and will be moving away from their home town of Akure to Yola, 500 miles away, to be closer to his job. He warns the boys not to give their mother any trouble while he is away, or he will come back and give them a “Guerdon” (read: whooping). Benjamin considers, “Whenever I think of our story, how that morning would mark the last time we’d live together, all of us, as the family we’d alway been, I begin–even two decades later–to wish he hadn’t left, that he had never received that transfer letter.”
Although their mother is formidable in her own right, the boys begin to grow mischievous and start fishing in a polluted river where they’d been forbidden to go. Although Ikenna is determined to stop, his decision comes too late as they are seen by a neighbor who tells their mother what they’ve been doing. On their father’s next visit home, he gives them the whipping of their lives, with Ikenna receiving the harshest punishment because he is the oldest and the leader. “He’d been hurt most of all by the whipping, especially because Father had put much of the blame on him and had whipped him the hardest without knowing that Ikenna had tried to make us stop. ‘What I want you to be is a group of fishermen who will be fishers of good dreams, who will not relent until they have caught the biggest catch. I want you to be juggernauts, menacing and unstoppable fishermen.’ ”
Ikenna starts to turn on his brothers, locking Boja out of their room and destroying mementos that the brothers cherish. When their mother presses Obembe and Benjamin for information, they confess that there had been another incident at the river, one that truly put Ikenna on the path to destruction. In one of their visits, they encountered a local madman named Abulu, who was known for prophesying. On that day by the river, Abulu had said, “Ikenna, you shall die by the hands of a fisherman.” From that moment, Ikenna believed one of his brothers would try to kill him.
This story is devastating in its depiction of four brothers who have loved each other and stood by each other through everything to be torn apart by paranoia and suspicion. With each tragedy, I kept hoping for a resolution that would bring healing. And, weirdly, as tragic as the story is, it does deliver on that in the final pages. Without giving away any plot points, on page 278 (after I had to force myself to keep reading), Ben’s father tells him that there is nothing greater, “nothing grander,” than suffering for your brothers. “Our Lord Jesus says: ‘For there’s no greater love than for a man to suffer for his friends.’ ” Through this story of dashed hopes and unfulfilled dreams, this love between brothers is more powerful than tragedy.
When I read Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I was impressed by it but at the same time, I found it so depressing I didn’t know how to respond. The Fishermen is less depressing yet more heart-breaking, if that makes any sense. That The Fishermen was Obioma’s debut novel is even more astounding to me (he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for both novels).
If you can stand to have your soul shattered, then you really must read this novel. Because stories need to be told.