Fictional debuts accompanied by a ballyhoo of critical plaudits are likely to arouse suspicion. Two stories in this collection by the Nigerian writer Uwem Akpan have been published in the New Yorker; one was shortlisted for the Caine prize (the “African Booker”) in 2007. Can Akpan really be as good as this suggests? Some readers of his tale Fattening for Gabon might initially have doubts. Focusing on impoverished children in Benin, whose uncle plans to sell them into slavery, it confronts us with colloquial dialogue that not only mixes languages (French, English, Idaatcha, Egun) but also dialects: “Mais, il est un bon homme. Very good man. For now make you just dey enjoy me, dugbe se to ayawhenume se. Once I become rich, my dogs no go even let una come near my gate o, comme Lazarus.” Even readers prepared to acknowledge Akpan’s accuracy might find this heavy going.

They should, nevertheless, persevere. The peculiarities of pronunciation, the weird macaronic formulations, gradually fall into place as you concentrate on the edge-of-seat narratives that Akpan cunningly unfolds. The five stories in this collection (really three short stories and two novellas) all evoke painful and puzzling experience as perceived by African children. Each story

is set in a different country. In all of them innocence collides with corruption; in all, family loyalty is attacked by forces that the children barely comprehend. In An Ex-mas Feast a Nairobi street-family prepares for the festive season. The father is a pickpocket, the daughter, aged 12, a prostitute. Though at first her Mama disapproves (“Whore! You don’t even have breasts yet”), she fervently thanks God, when the girl brings food, “for blessing Maisha with white clients at Ex-mas”. The narrator, an eight-year-old boy, sniffs glue for courage, before abandoning his family.

Not all the children in these stories are poor: more often what impinges on their lives is religious or ethnic hostility. In What Language Is That? a little Ethiopian girl, daughter of a Christian businessman, is forbidden to meet “Best Friend”, a Muslim. In an atmosphere acrid with the aftermath of riots, the two children communicate by mime from their balconies. Religious conflict also erupts in the most substantial story in this volume, Luxurious Hearses, set in Nigeria. Its hero is a teenage boy attempting to flee south from sectarian violence on a 70-seater bus. In one sense he is a simple Muslim lad who has never watched television, used a toilet or talked to female strangers. But in another he is typically complex and diverse. Baptised as Gabriel, he was brought up as Jubril after his Muslim mother left his Christian father. The “mangled story of his religious identity” is, though, cut short by a compromising marker: he has had a hand amputated for theft. Among passengers in flight from Islamist ferocity, he is desperate to hide the tell-tale stump. As a jittery crew of escapees jostle with Jubril on the “luxurious bus”, the author assembles a vivid portrait of the hopes and hatreds, ideals and confusions that scar his native country.

Since Akpan is a Jesuit priest, it is scarcely surprising that religious imagery pervades these stories, which interweave themes of martyrdom, betrayal and the threat to innocence. But they are never dogmatic or didactic. On the contrary they indict blind partisanship, whether racial, religious or political. And although they often deal with horrific material, they retain an astringent clarity. The final story

in this collection, the heartbreaking My Parents’ Bedroom, is narrated by a nine-year-old Rwandan girl whose mother is a Tutsi and father a Hutu. From the hills near her comfortable house she can see “banana and plantain trees, their middle leaves rolled up, like yellow-green swords slicing the wind”. The image is both beautiful and ominous. As attractive, metaphorical swords mutate into ugly, literal machetes, one is both appalled by the impact of the tale and amazed by the tact and skill of its teller. This time the ballyhoo is real: Akpan is an important writer.

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan

Abacus £11.99 pp294

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