Which of Your Sons? – Book review

Images: Which of Your Sons? author Keith Richards at the book launch at George IV

“A 70 year old white bloke” launches his debut novel about Nigeria, based on a lifetime of experience and empathy

Keith Richards, long term Chiswick resident and author of Never Quite the Insider, a Nigerian memoir,  launched his debut novel in the Boston Room at George IV on Sunday night (23 March) with a discussion with Rhianna Dhillon, film and TV critic, and Ed Emeka Keazor, historian and lawyer, and the accompaniment of The Lagos Afro-Funk Collective.

Which of Your Sons? is a novel about Nigeria. A novel written by an outsider who spent 25 years living there – 35 years coming and going – who knows what a violent mess of a country it is but loves it nonetheless for the humanity of its people and it culture.

Told from the perspective of two newbies who arrive and share a car from the airport – Terry, an ex-British army engineer, Millwall supporting racist, and Robert, a Black Londoner from Chiswick, who has never previously paid any attention to his mother’s Nigerian heritage – the country unfolds through their experiences on a three-year stint working for multinational corporations.

It is almost easier for the White foreigner, who can live behind the barriers of the company compound, being driven everywhere and not exploring further than the company offices and Pat’s Bar, than it is for the Black foreigner, as he meets his cousin Isioma and tries to assimilate; though both find living in Lagos leads them in their own way to question their identity.

It is Isioma, a well-educated woman from the east of the country, who flat shares with a couple of other young women who work with her in a bank, who binds the story together, introducing Nigerian culture and history, not as a peripheral backdrop, but as a vital, ever-present force in their lives.

The desecration of her family’s lands by mining, the betrayal of the colonial authorities who returned the loyalty of those Nigerians who fought in the Burma campaign during the Second World War with oppression and violence at home, and the scars of the Biafran war, too recent to talk about, which tore their family apart, have shaped Isioma’s life, and Robert’s, in ways he only gradually comes to understand.

When a spectacularly violent incident threatens her career and independence, she too is forced to choose between family and survival.

Keith Richards’ vibrant and evocative descriptions immerse the reader in the heat and stink of the city from the first page, when Terry and Robert are met at the airport by a Protocol Officer, ’employed by companies and individuals to escort expatriates and VIPs through the labyrinth of MMIA’s immigration, customs, health, drugs and firearms, and currency control checkpoints, all designed to procure “dash” from the unsuspecting and the unprepared.’

From the sticky carpets of the airport enroute to their accommodation through one of the city’s notorious traffic jams, Terry and Robert form an unlikely bond. The characters are very relatable – to me as a Londoner, but also to Nigerians, as Keith’s friend Ed Emeka Keazor, musician, historian and lawyer, advised him and introduced him to Nigerian editor Richard Ali to keep it real.

The text is sprinkled with snippets of dialogue in several Nigerian languages, which to the English reader adds a sense of the sounds of the languages without interrupting the flow of the narrative.

Each chapter in introduced with an epigram from Nigerian literature or song lyrics, a soupeçon of wisdom which sets the tenor of the coming episode, the musicality of it a nod to the long car journeys Keith and other corporate businessmen have spent travelling around the country in air-conditioned comfort, listening to local music. You get the sense that a lot of the author’s 30-odd years were spent in bars on these travels, chewing the fat with locals. Beer is a universal currency.

The cover illustration and design by Renike, and even the quality of the paper, add to the general classiness of the publication, and the issues it raises remain with the reader after you’ve mopped your eyes finishing the final pages.

Copies of Which of Your Sons? are available at Keith’s two local independent bookshops:

Bookcase at 268 Chiswick High Road, W4 1PD – bookcaselondon.co.uk

Everybody Reads at 6 Chiswick High Road, W4 1TH – everybodyreads.com