"‘A lyrical investigation … both powerful and transcendent’ CHIGOZIE OBIOMA
‘Acutely observed, hauntingly rendered and deeply affecting’ AMINATTA FORNA
‘Both epic and intimate’ MARGO JEFFERSON
An astonishing search for a missing person, the hidden tragedies of war and the truth of Nigeria’s history.
Emmanuel Iduma never met his uncle, his father’s favourite brother and the man for whom he is named. The elder Emmanuel left home in 1967 to fight in the Biafran War and was not seen again. The war lasted for three years, with young Igbo men volunteering to fight for a breakaway republic in the chaotic wake of British decolonization. Around one hundred thousand others who fought in the war share a fate like Emmanuel’s uncle, though there are no official records of these losses. The tensions that gave rise to the conflict remain live, threatening sometimes to bubble over. In this landscape, there are no monuments or graves. Instead, a collective remembering that remains, for the most part, silent.
I Am Still with You sees a young Nigerian return to his place of birth. Travelling the route of the war, Iduma explores both a national history and the mysteries of his own family, finding both somewhat scarred and haunted, the memories warped by time and the darkest parts left for decades unspoken."
"A Stranger’s Pose is an evocative and mesmerising account of travels across different African cities. With lyrical and absorbing prose, Emmanuel invites the reader to share in his travels, and the encounters he made along the way.
Alongside these depictions of new places and people is a compelling, and very personal, meditation on the meaning of home, and the importance of intimacy to a lone traveller. Through these vignettes—an arrest in a market in N’djamena,
meeting the famed photographer Malick Sidibe in Bamako, speaking with a migrant in Tangier who says “the sea is the only way,”—Emmanuel showcases the generosity of strangers, the power of language and translation, and much more."
