Afapinen

Afapinen Afapinen is a literary and popular magazine of Nigerian criticism.

In this raw, uncut essay is Ubong Johnson's distaste for the redpill community which almost misguided his friend."These ...
12/11/2023

In this raw, uncut essay is Ubong Johnson's distaste for the redpill community which almost misguided his friend.

"These hypemen in our nightclubs, these songs, these posts which glorify wealth and sex, they all have to be stopped somehow. And women, too, who think men pluck money from trees and would do naught but squander this money trying to get laid. Maybe even older men need to be stopped, too. Young men have to be taught to live life for themselves, to earn money because they want to and not because they must earn money or risk being considered lesser men."

by Ubong Johnson

"For me, good poetry should be tangible. When I say tangible, I mean it should have something you can hold on to. It can...
12/11/2023

"For me, good poetry should be tangible. When I say tangible, I mean it should have something you can hold on to. It can be from style, theme, language, or just anything that strikes. Good poetry should leave you with the exact emotion the poem attempts to project. It should leave you wondering who the poet is, and what kind of life the poet lives or must have lived."--Obiageli A. Iloakasia

by Carl Terver

In his new fiction, Carl Terver presents a metafictional story of Mr. Orvangegbilin who purloins the opening sentences o...
12/11/2023

In his new fiction, Carl Terver presents a metafictional story of Mr. Orvangegbilin who purloins the opening sentences of past writers, which causes him to never write any story of his own. But more, this story is a real dive into the unexpected. Read now:

by Carl Terver

A short personal essay where Prosper C. Ifeanyi writes about moving to a new city, Yusef Komunyakaa’s Dien Cai Dau, and ...
12/11/2023

A short personal essay where Prosper C. Ifeanyi writes about moving to a new city, Yusef Komunyakaa’s Dien Cai Dau, and other musings. Read now:

by Prosper C. Ìféányí

In his new essay, Oko Owi Ocho resurrects the debate of African epistemology in academia and contemporary thought, again...
12/11/2023

In his new essay, Oko Owi Ocho resurrects the debate of African epistemology in academia and contemporary thought, against the surge of erasure. If Marxism has been taught for so long, why not Fanonism? And more. Read now:

by Oko Owi Ocho

A review of Richard Ali's The Anguish and Vigilance of Things."Richard Ali’s language is a mixture of Derek Walcott, lik...
12/11/2023

A review of Richard Ali's The Anguish and Vigilance of Things.

"Richard Ali’s language is a mixture of Derek Walcott, like clear water, and Wole Soyinka, with the aura of corrugated zinc roofs. . . . Ali is the last of his kind and more like a cameo in Nigerian poetry today. Or one may say, having been invisible for a long time, even before the publication of Anguish, he’s that hermit poet who calls from the wild, a Thoreau of sorts, sending us Walden love letters of poetry once from the blues. His poetry in The Anguish… elevates itself to the place of an extreme highbrow readership; few readers will have the patience to go beyond the first pages. His voice, however, is important: it provides diversity in a wholesale assessment of serious, contemporary Nigerian poetry," writes Carl Terver

by Carl Terver

A review of Leila Aboulela's latest novel River Spirit."Through Akuany’s life this novel teaches us that we are actors i...
12/11/2023

A review of Leila Aboulela's latest novel River Spirit.

"Through Akuany’s life this novel teaches us that we are actors in the game of time. That history chooses whom it favours, and what can be taken away from victims it doesn’t favour. It teaches us that history has always been a conflict of ideas: whose is more superior? That in fighting for this supremacy we give ideas more importance over our humanity. And that sometimes ideas take root not in the best places or time, be it a religious visionary leading a revolt or an invasive foreign culture, forever upending the flow of certain river spirits, like Akuany, who can be any of us. Thus, we cannot allow ourselves to be enslaved by ideas; that the constant thing is to seek freedom," writes Carl Terver.

by Carl Terver

In Ancci's review of Carl Terver's For Girl at Rubicon, he takes a survey of memory as the poet's dominant trope, echoin...
25/06/2023

In Ancci's review of Carl Terver's For Girl at Rubicon, he takes a survey of memory as the poet's dominant trope, echoing Bloom, that "memory is always an art, even when it works involuntarily."

by Ancci

"The Fishermen is about fish—some, palm-sized smelts; some, brown cods; some, tilapias—it is about fish-sized dreams. In...
12/06/2023

"The Fishermen is about fish—some, palm-sized smelts; some, brown cods; some, tilapias—it is about fish-sized dreams. In it, there are dreams of becoming a pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, a professor; dreams of a better Nigeria, and dreams of Canada. There are childhood dreams, adult dreams, national dreams, and dreams that end up smelling “the smell of dead fish and tadpoles” when the dreamers are awakened by the cataclysmic prophecy of a madman.

"Nine-year-old Benjamin and his three older brothers, Ikenna, Boja, and Obembe, are youngsters living in the sleepy town of Akure. They are trilinguals who speak English in formal settings, their native Igbo with their parents, and the language of the town, Yoruba, elsewhere. When their disciplinarian father Mr. Agwu is transferred to a new branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria in Yola, the four brothers seize upon his absence to indulge in the norms of bye-gone years among teenagers and adolescents in the Nigeria of the 1990s—football-playing, video-gaming, mock-acting, song-chanting, and fatefully, fish-catching. It is during one of such escapades at the banks of the Omi Ala that they come face-to-face with Abulu the madman who soothsays the death of the eldest brother at the hands of one of his siblings. This encounter serves as the catalyst that transforms Ikenna—and the novel’s plot—into something increasingly dark. As paranoia sets in, fraternal and familial bonds are stretched to the utmost, minds begin to crack like glass, and the Agwu’s once-quiet family home becomes the stage upon which one tragedy after another is enacted."--Emmanuel Oluwaseun Dairo

by Emmanuel Oluwaseun Dairo

No Nigerian work in recent history, poetry or prose, has impressed me greatly since Ahmed Maiwada’s We’re fish as Abubak...
27/05/2023

No Nigerian work in recent history, poetry or prose, has impressed me greatly since Ahmed Maiwada’s We’re fish as Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s When We Were Fireflies. And this review is a celebration of this great work of fiction by Ibrahim.
-- Carl Terver

by Carl Terver

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