A Mind To Silence And Other Stories – Anwuli Onjogwu

As the passengers from across the country poured out into the bus station from vehicles big and small, layers of the city’s stress settled onto their skin. Before leaving Aflao, the busy border town between Ghana and Togo, some of the girls had advised Priscilla to look for work in Labadi. ‘Osu busy o. Dey get plenty Liberian girls for there,’ Gifty said, gnawing on a chewing stick. ‘Dem fill de place.’ ‘Abeg no go East Legon.

Too much police wahala,’ Yomi added. ‘Labadi town dey between Osu and Labadi beach,’ Gifty continued. She spat out wooden splinters from her chewing stick. ‘You go still find obroni for dat place.’ By way of Ghanaian beaches, Labadi is fairly unremarkable. In fact, it was quite dirty, the ocean gray with accumulated filth.

Priscilla was directed to Madam Joanna, one of those older women with a perpetual I am not amused face, the mouth poised ever ready with a quip should you step out of line. Her darkened knuckles were a telltale sign of regular skin-bleaching rituals. Her hair was shaved low and she wore large gold- hoop earrings, gold bangles, and a collection of necklaces. Her chest heaved in the tight mid-length floral dress she wore. More was more for Madam Joanna. ‘Good afternoon, ma,’ Priscilla greeted. Madam Joanna, while in repose on a sun lounger, shifted her eyes from her diary toward Priscilla.

She peered at her over her sunglasses. The young woman was tall, and she wore her hair in long braids that fell down her back. Her eyes shone. ‘Yes?’ ‘Please, my name is Cici. I am looking for work. I was told you can help me.’ Madam Joanna raised herself from the sun lounger in a bid to create balance between her and the towering Priscilla, who, she noticed, made no attempt to reorder the space between them. ‘What can you do?’

‘Well, I have experience, ma.’ Priscilla adjusted the bag so the strap sat firmly on her right shoulder, then ran her hands down her midriff and adjusted the waistband of her skirt where it dug into her skin. Madam Joanna understood. During the day, Madam Joanna set up her kebab stand on the beach in front of her bar. All her servers were girls and roughly the same age. Some were slim, others were thick and round. There were short girls and a few taller ones.

All were fairly attractive. Cici would fit right in, Madam Joanna concluded.

An air of history surrounds this year’s edition of the AKO Caine Prize. After close to two years of global disquiet occasioned by a viral pandemic, 2022 held out some promise of restoration – a slow yet heartening reclamation of normalcy. Or, at any rate, a semblance of what was nearly lost. It’s said that life is short but art long.

One proof can be found in the sheer profusion and vitality of the short story entries for 2022. The 349 submissions, and 267 eligible entries that contended for this year’s AKO Caine Prize represented a record. They surpassed by far the totals for previous years. What was the import?

For many African countries, Covid-19 was a public health and economic nightmare. Yet, by some fortuitous and inexplicable quirk, the virus did not unleash on the continent anything approaching the Olympian scale of devastation forecast by epidemiological experts. By contrast, on the strength of this year’s entries, it appears that the pandemic may have fertilised Africans’ literary creativity. The marvel did not lie alone in the impressive count. All the judges – myself, Elisa Diallo (an academic, author and publisher of French and Guinean descent); Angela Wachuka (the Kenyan co-founder of ‘Book Bunk’); South Africa’s Lethlogonolo Mokgoroane (co-founder of ‘The Cheeky Natives’); and the UK-based Nigerian visual artist, Ade ‘Asiko’ Okelarin – were taken by the technical sophistication, stylistic poise, and thematic diversity of a fair number of the entries.

In story after story, the adeptness of touch, freshness of perspective, originality of language, and depth of insight sustained a sense of encounter with something akin to orchestral splendour. The authors hail from various geographic locations and cultures of Africa – East, West, North and South – as well as the global African diaspora. The entries are inspirited by animist, secular, Christian and Islamic ethos.

Some stories are as stubborn in staking out political and historical grounds, as others are unabashed in their disavowal of such animus. Taken together, the authors represent a broad pan African tapestry. And the collective harvest is nothing short of a narrative smorgasbord. The stories are forged in a diversity of tempers and forms: mysteries, detective, noirs, the epistolary, futurism, political thrillers, experimental, the good old traditional mode.

Given the magnificent scandal of narrative riches before us, the task of selecting a shortlist of five stories proved particularly – predictably – arduous. To their credit, the judges were willing to be painstaking.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 0a7d2b4fd7576e6d
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,916,335 bytes (1.828 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 299
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 541.67 minutes
• Total Words: 108,334
• Total Characters: 596,470
• Average Words per Page: 362.32
• Average Characters per Page: 1994.88

Most Frequent Words

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