Helon Habila

Poet and prose writer Helon Habila studied Literature at the University of Jos and lectured for three years at the Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi, before going to Lagos to write for Hints Magazine. Extracts from his collection of short stories, Prison Stories, were published in Nigeria in 2000. The full text was published as a novel in the UK under the title Waiting for an Angel in 2002 and received a Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best First Book) in 2003. Helon Habila also won the MUSON Poetry Prize in 2000 and was the arts editor of the Vanguard Newspaper. He is currently a Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. His new novel, Measuring Time, is forthcoming in 2005.

This interview took place in June 2005, and was hosted by Reader in Residence Susan Tranter, with questions submitted by visitors to the site.

HH: At the moment I am reading three books at once, I Saw Ramallah, a memoir by Mourid Barghouti, an exiled Palestinian writer, and The Whale Caller, by the South African writer, Zakes Mda - this one is not out yet, it will be out in a couple of weeks, I got it as complimentary from the publisher. And finally, a book of poems by Chomka Hardi, she is a Kurdish poet living in London at the moment, the title is Life For Us. I recommend all three.

Diane, Maryland: I just found some excerpts of your work and would love to read more. Congratulations on your contributions to the literary world! I'm curious to know, what is your perspective on the cultural crossroads and challenges that the African culture and identity faces in the diaspora? Is the culture adaptable and inheritable?

HH: I believe all cultures are adaptable and inheritable, in fact by definition a culture is a way of life, and as you know life never remains static. African culture has travelled for hundreds of years before now, via slave routes and settlements, in America and Europe and Latin America. The African religion has modified itself into Voodoo in Haiti and Cuba and other countries with a similar history; the African myths and folktales of Tar Baby, Briar Rabbit, Ananse, Eshu etc have modified and reinvigorated themselves in the diaspora. We can also go into music and so on. The present crop of African exiles and students and emigrants continue to travel with their food and literature and drama, they pass it on to their children - if the children are attentive - it is one way they can maintain their pride and dignity in a world that sometimes tries to repress them. I recommend David Nwokedi's novel Fitzgerald's Wood for an interesting treatment of this subject.

HH: Technically, in civil rights terms, so much has changed for the better since the coming of democracy in 1999. People don't get arrested as arbitrarily as they used to. But injustice still persists in the land, people in power still break the law with impugnity - recently in Anambra state a party chieftain attempted to depose the elected governor with the assistance of the police. The chieftain is still at large. The government does nothing about it. Such things break your spirit. Nigeria is the 7th or 8th largest exporter of crude petrol, 90 percent of that money still goes to only 1 percent of the population. That breaks your spirit. What really breaks the spirit the most is when the people themselves allow these things to happen. I am now convinced that change in Nigeria will never come from the top, it can only come from the civil society. I hope it comes soon.

Ademilola, Nigeria: I read your novel, Waiting for an Angel, a month ago and I liked your depiction of the tyranical military regime in Nigeria. I would like to know to what extent the novel is factual - I mean your authobiography. Like Lombo, you were a journalist and even the gathering of artists, such as Odia Ofeimum and Toni Kan, towards the end of the novel is like a glimpse into the real world from the world of fiction. I would also like to know if the title of Beckett's play Waiting for Godot has any inflences on your novel. It is almost as if all your characters are hopeless even though the owner of the resturant at Poverty street finally gets over her depression. Is there really hope for Nigeria even though it is only a thin line (the ocean) that separates Nigeria from America - I may have gotten the teacher's philosophy wrong?

HH: I like to blur the line between reality and fiction, but I guess almost all fiction does that. I go a step further and sometimes use my friend's names, and myself, and real events in my writing. I seek by doing so to lend to my writing a greater urgency and immediacy. I won't call my writing pessimistic - in my stories people still fall in love in spite of repression, people still aspire in spite of being in prison, they write poetry - and what greater affirmation of life and hope can you find that is greater than poetry, self-expression? Lomba is denied physical liberty, so he discovers mental liberty, and as long as we have mental freedom, we can never be in shackles. Colonialism realised that, so it tried to make the African believe he was mentally inferior, dictators realise that so they have brainwashing departments. Writers, I believe, write to free the mind - their own minds and those of their readers. I wasn't influenced by Beckett when I chose my title, although I do enjoy his plays and prose.

Anu, UK: I wonder to what extent every African writer has to leave Africa in order to achieve success? And if this is so, does the awareness of that create a certain kind of writing (where a sense of detachment, or the importance of roots and identity, is already built in)?

HH: I don't think African writers have to leave Africa to achieve success - by success I assume you mean commercial success. Most African writers live in Africa, only a few live outside Africa. But in the modern global village we live in, surely African writers have the right to live where ever they want, just as I am sure European writers have the same right? In the modern multicultural world where everyone has a story to tell, surely the African should be allowed a voice? When you mention roots and identity you are already assuming that Africans should only write about their roots and identity - you forget that their roots, like everyone else's, are the human root, and their identity is the human identity, and so they run no danger of losing their roots and identity as long as they live among humans. In the end, regardless of our politics and opinions, we write to illuminate the human condition.

HH: No, not at all. I am happy to be called African, as long as the term is used to describe, not to limit. But I always remind people that Africa is not a country, it is a continent with many countiries.

HH: Many. From Shakespeare to Soyinka. I am always open to impressions and ideas. The beauty of the novel is that it can absorb as many styles and philosophies as one cares to throw into it, and it gets the better for it. Very early influences though, and I still hear them ringing in my sentences and opinions, are Stephen Crane, Achebe, Ngugi, and Shakespeare.

HH: I do write poetry as well as prose - in fact I secretly see myself more as a poet than a prose writer. However, I write poetry only when I am inspired, unlike prose which I can will myself to write. In a way I agree with Wordsworth when he described poetry as a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions - recollected in tranquility.

HH: I see myself dabbling in other genres, like biography, and drama, and movie scripts. I am a restless sort of person and I love trying new things. I was recently commissioned by PEN International to write a short play - I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I hope to repeat it in the future. But of course my mainstay will always be the novel and poetry. I hope to publish my poems and short stories soon.

HH: My next book, Measuring Time, is not going to be as cute and clever as the first one, I am afraid. It is more traditional, more down to earth. Here I seek to express myself more directly, to say exactly what I mean. But it is as serious as the first one, still as political. It is set in a village in Nigeria, and it tries to see the history of Nigeria through the history of that village, it spans over a hundred years. The central characters are twins, Mamo and LaMamo. One remains in the village and becomes famous as a historian and biographer for the chief, the other travels to Liberia and becomes a soldier. Things reach a climax when they meet again fifteen years later.



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