1--What is the title of your latest release?
THE FIVE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES OF ANDY AFRICA
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
The novel is about Andy Aziza, a smart and funny fifteen-year-old boy, coming of age in present-day Nigeria. He’s obsessed with blondes, whiteness, life abroad in the West, who his true father is, and these obsessions are intensified when his life is suddenly destabilized by communal violence.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The decision was made unconsciously, for I’d always wanted to write about Kontagora, where I grew up, and Northern Nigeria, because this region has received glaringly insufficient literary treatment.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Yes, definitely! It would be so fun! We’ve got so much shared interests – Afrofuturism, math, pop culture, religion, poetry. We’d laugh a lot. Most importantly, he’d help me understand myself even more.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Smart, funny, honest.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learnt that my writing was more multifaceted than I’d assumed, for example, that I’ve got a “raw”, satirical range that I should explore more.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Somewhat in-between. I first begin by drafting a chapter. Then I rewrite it, and I do so iteratively, incrementally: from one paragraph to the next and then back to the first until I have a workable draft. Then I proceed to drafting the next chapter. This is the method I employed while writing my novel, but it might change in my subsequent books.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Maybe a shish kebab? I’m not a good foodie!
9--Describe your writing space/office!
My bedroom. A desk beside the window. I sit in a swivel chair, a desktop before me. Behind the desktop is a bookshelf with some of my favorite books. When I’m writing creatively, I pull the curtains and use a lamp.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Akwaeke Emezi. I’m amazed by how prolific they are, the quality of their work, and how their writing spans several genres.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Black Boy by Richard Wright. It intensified my desire to become a writer when I read it as a teenager. It awakened me. For example, it made me become more aware of the color of my skin – something I didn’t have to do much in Northern Nigeria – and helped me to see through the Western culture (e.g. Hollywood films) that I was being inundated with daily.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
One morning in September 2020, a few days after my agent had sent out my novel to editors in the UK, she called to inform me that a publisher wished to pre-empt the book. Although I didn’t end up signing with the publisher, I felt so much relief and pride.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
Literary fiction. I love how it’s often not ‘formulaic’, how it gives writers freedom to innovate aesthetically.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
I’m not sure – Chicago? I’ve rewatched sections of this film countless times. Maybe because it reflects my own sense of humor or because the writing is simply fantastic.
15--What is your favorite season?
In the UK: autumn. In Nigeria: harmattan.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I’m not great at celebrating, sadly. I should do better!
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
The Lex Fridman Podcast. It’s not new, but I’m a huge fan. It’s always amazing listening to Lex speak to the brightest minds in science, tech, philosophy, and the arts. The podcast makes me very optimistic about humanity and our trajectory. I love how Lex’s guests explain complicated concepts very simply.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Nigerian, for sure. But I also love Mediterranean.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I follow football and tennis. I also try to run or go on long walks.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
More writing!
Crackling with energy and intelligence, this debut is the "smart, subversive, funny, heartbreaking" (Kamila Shamsie) story of an exceptional teenager coming of age in the shadow of colonialism and communal violence in Nigeria.
Andrew Aziza is an unusually smart fifteen-year-old in Kontagora, Nigeria. He lives with his fiercely protective mother, Gloria, and fantasizes obsessively about white girls-especially blondes. When he's not in church, at school, or hanging about town with his droogs wishing to become one of “Africa's first superheroes,” he's contemplating the larger questions with his teacher Zahrah and his equally brilliant friend Fatima, a Hausa-Fulani girl who has feelings for him. Together they discuss mathematical theorems, Black power, and what Andy has deemed the Curse of Africa.
Sure enough, the reluctantly nicknamed Andy Africa soon falls hopelessly and inappropriately in love with the first white girl he lays eyes on: Eileen. But at the church party held to celebrate her arrival, multiple crises loom. An unfamiliar man there claims, despite his mother's denials, to be Andy's father, and an anti-Christian mob has gathered, headed for the church. In the ensuing havoc and its aftermath, Andy is forced to reckon with his identity and desires and determine how to live on the so-called Cursed Continent.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa announces a dazzlingly unique literary voice. Crackling with energy, this tragicomic novel provides a stunning lens into contemporary African life, the complicity of the West, and the impossible challenges of growing up in a turbulent world.
Coming of Age [Bloomsbury, On Sale: April 18, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781635577778 / eISBN: 9781635577785]
Stephen Buoro was born in Nigeria in 1993. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia as the recipient of the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship. He lives in Norwich, United Kingdom. Andy Africa is his first novel.
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