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A review by yevolem
Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
2.0
This novella's cover says, "A surreal fusion of African politics, climate fiction, and mythology in the tongue of poetry and philosophy" - Tlotlo Tsamaase. As can also be seen on the cover, there are five towers, called fingers, that were built off the coast of Nigeria in the shape of a hand. Only one of them is still habitable, the middle finger, called the Pinnacle. How metaphorical. For its political allegory it uses the standard economic model. The upper floors rule everything, live in luxury, and do nothing productive. The middle floors are the professional class and the undersea floors are the underclass. Everyone outside the tower must be the enemy. The climate fiction is that the sea levels rose and now an unknown amount of the world is underwater. Although lip service is given to world mythologies, the mythology of the Yoruba people takes precedence. This was by far the weakest part for me. There wasn't anything that I found to be strong.
Yekini is a mid-level analyst for the government, which she'd rather not be, but it's a living. She dreams of saving people and making the ark/tower a better place for all. Ngozi is a mid-level administrator with great ambitions who dreams of becoming an upper because it's what he deserves. Everyone else matters not. Tuoyo lost her wife at sea to outsiders and now only seeks to live in peace while overseeing her undersea level. These three viewpoints who meet up right away provide clashing views of class conflict and different perspectives of life in the Pinnacle. One other viewpoint and archived materials make up the rest of the chapters. I didn't care about any of the characters, which was at least somewhat because of they were too much caricatures of what they went meant to represent. As to the story itself, I found it to be a rather generic take on government corruption, solidarity, and outside intervention. I especially didn't like how it ended.
It was my mistake for not considering how allegorical this was going to be. For me this an another example of how impenetrable allegories can be if you don't have the relevant cultural knowledge to understand them. This has also been the case for a lot of the translated allegorical short fiction I've read, mostly Chinese. I don't know if it's the Black African authors I've come across, mostly Nigerian, or if it's something else, but their works baffle me almost every time. I'm continually unable to tell if there's some deeper meaning and/or if I simply don't like what's presented. I tried reading Son of the Storm, one of Okungbowa's novels, and didn't get far because of what a peculiarly uncomfortable experience it was and wrote as such, before removing everything I wrote about the stuff I hadn't finished. I didn't like this because the allegory is put above everything else to where questioning anything about the story is irrelevant because that's not what matters.
Yekini is a mid-level analyst for the government, which she'd rather not be, but it's a living. She dreams of saving people and making the ark/tower a better place for all. Ngozi is a mid-level administrator with great ambitions who dreams of becoming an upper because it's what he deserves. Everyone else matters not. Tuoyo lost her wife at sea to outsiders and now only seeks to live in peace while overseeing her undersea level. These three viewpoints who meet up right away provide clashing views of class conflict and different perspectives of life in the Pinnacle. One other viewpoint and archived materials make up the rest of the chapters. I didn't care about any of the characters, which was at least somewhat because of they were too much caricatures of what they went meant to represent. As to the story itself, I found it to be a rather generic take on government corruption, solidarity, and outside intervention. I especially didn't like how it ended.
It was my mistake for not considering how allegorical this was going to be. For me this an another example of how impenetrable allegories can be if you don't have the relevant cultural knowledge to understand them. This has also been the case for a lot of the translated allegorical short fiction I've read, mostly Chinese. I don't know if it's the Black African authors I've come across, mostly Nigerian, or if it's something else, but their works baffle me almost every time. I'm continually unable to tell if there's some deeper meaning and/or if I simply don't like what's presented. I tried reading Son of the Storm, one of Okungbowa's novels, and didn't get far because of what a peculiarly uncomfortable experience it was and wrote as such, before removing everything I wrote about the stuff I hadn't finished. I didn't like this because the allegory is put above everything else to where questioning anything about the story is irrelevant because that's not what matters.