Beamis12

I believe this is the third book in the last two weeks that I have read that featured an unnamed narrator.  So our unnamed narrator returns to his homecity Lagos, after a fifteen year absence and he finds so many things that are different. He meets a first cousin, a young lady who was born just before he left the country and he hopes that the country stays together for her sake. He is amazed at the corruption going on everywhere, where people who have jobs are either never paid or paid so little what they can pad their pockets with make a difference between starving or living. He see schemes and plots, police officers arresting people and then letting them go after they have paid enough to the policeman's satisfaction. The cost of graft is just figured into the cost of the item, or the favor the person needs done.

In a country with only a 57%percent literacy rate he is amazed to see a young woman reading a challenging work by Michael Ondaatjie and finds the vision incongruous with the rickety bus they are on. 

Our unnamed narrator is a keen observer, and he shows the reader what it is like to return to a place and find so much changed and even things that have not. The first things I noted when I started reading this short book was the smoothness of his writing. He writes as matter of fact as one speaking. I loved ht pictures included, helped readers not familiar with this country to picture exactly what he is seeing. Never read his first book which I know has won many awards, will most likely seek that one out.