A Life Elsewhere

Review: A Life Elsewhere by Segun Afolabi

Contents:

Seeking refuge

In the confusion the youngest wanders off, and heads for the "glass hotel". Admitted to one of the rooms by a cleaner who speaks his language, he sits on a bed and dreams, gazing at the view and "looking for the face of God".

The story is a subtle but direct reprise of the confusion, terror and hope suffered by the family and thousands of others like them, and it neatly establishes the mood and the themes that will run through the collection. In "Arithmetic", the narrator watches the doors close on the London Underground and reflects: He encounters her later on at the club where he plays, and refuses to perform that night.

In "The Husband of Your Wife's Best Friend", an air traffic controller is alienated from his family and colleagues by a persistent fantasy about a fellow worker. These are uneasy lives, in which the protagonists are unable to locate any refuge from their inner devastation. The effect is heightened by the fact that the social context and geography of the places they inhabit are somehow missing; this gives the stories a relentless focus on the characters' inner life, but also an intensely enigmatic quality, as if the reader is wandering in a thick fog around a featureless landscape. This mood seems a more or less convincing way of reflecting some aspects of the experience of exile.

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On the other hand, every narrator has the same doomed and world-weary tone, and every story ends in the same dying fall - "Some mornings I wake up and I am afraid. I have a wife, a daughter, a son. There will be days and days and days of this, and in the end it will be forgotten. Short, sharp insights into the untidy lives of others - highly recommended.

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He encounters her later on at the club where he plays, and refuses to perform that night. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. She decided to follow the example of her predecessors who, back in , left the Karamanid beylik and immigrated to Bulgaria. The problem in postcolonial states is when they fail to have an identity and to know themselves, which often leads to disastrous situations. Get our free fortnightly enews. He snatched a fistful of dead grass and leaves and wilted flowers and stuffed them into his jacket pocket; he could find no other container for these things. When she is not glued to a book, she spends time working out in the garden, learning Spanish, and trying very hard not to be the worst player at Ludo.

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Books by Segun Afolabi.

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