24th November, 2023
By Nehru Odeh.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library – Jorge Luis Borges
The annual Ake Arts and Book festival, which is ongoing in Lagos Nigeria, doesn’t disappoint. And there is no dull moments, thanks to the marvelous work Lola Shoneyin, poet, novelist, publisher and Director, Ake Arts and Book Festival has done – and is currently doing – with the festival.
The literary festival which started on Tuesday 22 November and ends on Saturday 25 November is currently holding at BON Hotel Ikeja Residence, Ikeja G.R.A, Lagos.
Every year for the past 11 years Shoneyin has invited writers from across the globe to the festival. This year 72 writers from 17 different countries within and outside Africa are currently in Lagos for the 11th edition of the festival. Fifty of those authors came from outside the country.
This year the writers and guests are already having fun at the festival as they are being treated to engaging and stimulating discourses during events such as book chats and panel discussions. And there have been lots of laughter, too.
One of such events that got guests virtually reeling with laughter was that of the book chat involving Zimbabwean multiple award-winning writer Petina Gappah, author of Elegy of Easterly, The Book of Memory, Rotten Row and most recently Out of Darkness, Shining Light, which explores the turbulent lives of David Livingstone’s travel companions.
The Book Chat held on Wednesday 23 November 2023.The host was Editor and Literary Critic Kinna Likimani.
Still, what actually made the guests roared with endless, insistent laughter repeatedly was when Petina started talking about her forthcoming memoir, Heaven is a Library.
Petina got the title from one of Argentine’s greatest writers Jorge Luis Borges’ quotes: “I have always imagined that Pàradise will be a kind of library.” And of course the guests were in a Paradise of sorts, not in a library this time but amid talks about books.
Petina’s memoir is about her childhood and family. And when she started telling the story about her father, whom everybody regarded as crazy due to his eccentricities, the well-ordered life he led, and his fixation on cleanliness, making sure that everything is “spotlessly clean,” it cracked everyone up so much so that publishers are already queing up to have publishing rights to the book.
“I was also writing a memoir because my brother died last year. He was just 38 In a terrible car accident. My father died two years before that. And I started to think a lot about legacy. Because they died two such different deaths.
“My dad is crazy. He walked us around the lawn saying, ‘Han han han I don’t want the funeral fires to spoil the lawn. So you put them here.’ So he measured the distance between the fires where the women cook and the toilet and the kitchen. And everything was equidistant because he was a very rational person. And we found in his suit pockets because he chose his own suits. we found notes because he didn’t want us to hustle and struggle for money.
“And my mum called me because I was out of the country. She was like, ‘Your father. He is completely crazy. He. walked me to town to pick his coffin.’
“He was that kind of person. He was completely prepared for death. He had his work done. In his briefcase we found the thing that made him most proud: the title deeds to his two houses, a copy of the registration book for his first car, a Peugeot 404 that Daddy bought in 1974 and all our school reports, the five of us. He lived a very ordered life,” Petina reminisced.
Petina then read excerpts from the memoir, which held the guests spellbound, with the hall erupting with laughter repeatedly.
“These are the moments I remember with great fondness,” she started, “the five of us and our parents gathered around our television set until my mother went to South Africa and brought back colour TV. There was just one channel in those days. The broadcat started at six each evening and ended exactly midnight. The six-hour book ended by the dourful playing of the old national anthem …”
Petnah read on and on, unveiling her father’s “spotlessly clean” eccentricities.