El Nukoya’s latest book, ‘Baron of Broad Street’, is ready for release to the public and will be launched on August 2. A statement from the acclaimed author of the best-selling Nine Lives said the book chronicles the polarised worlds of the Lagos impoverished and the affluent, living side-by-side, yet a world apart.
The winner of the ANA-Jaccaranda Prize for prose further said that ‘Baron of Broad Street’ captures the limited prospect for mobility in an often negligent society, and the determination of a select crop of youths to take it upon themselves and change this seemingly rigid equation, by all means necessary.
The book, which was written over a period of seven years, the writer said, focuses on contemporary Lagos, conflicts (of a different kind – class, culture, identity, moral), consciousness, a fresh conversation about who we are and a daring confrontation of the realities thereof.
‘Baron of Broad Street’ has been received with acclaim from the literary world and beyond.
Cherry Mosteshar, author of Unveiled, has said it is beautifully constructed. “El Nukoya brings places alive with such well-chosen words. I can see the scenes and feel the emotions, sophisticated, strong writing. El Nukoya astounds with amazingly sharp pieces of genius writing, Mosteshar said of the writer and book.”
For Bolanle Austen-Peters, founder of Terra Kulture, as well as creator and executive producer of Saro: The Musical, it is a brilliant novel written with superb clarity and knowledge on Yoruba Language and the subcultures in Lagos. “El Nukoya’s confident use of words draw you into the story, while working on your imagination. An absolute masterpiece.
“El Nukoya paints the portrait of Lagos and of those who make it happen with broad strokes and a keen eye for detail.”
This is a Lagos story told with aplomb, said Toni Kan, author of Nights of Creaking Bed.
Literary commentator, Professor Anderson Brown, said El Nukoya is driven to educate and to moralise, but also, perhaps above all, to entertain. “With this his second novel, he succeeds in doing all three.”
Essentially, the book available nationwide online or directly from the publisher is about Disun Falodun and his bosom friend, Ige – young boys growing up within the squeeze and squalour of Makoko. As they sit on the banks of the Lagos lagoon, they contemplate life on the other side of town, the exclusive district of the Metropolis covering Ikoyi, Victoria Island, and Broad Street, that mysterious area, so distant, yet so close.
Disun is the optimistic of the duo, resolute in his faith in a fair chance at success in Lagos, his ordinary background notwithstanding. Ige, on the other hand, held by a vibrant, radical mind, reasoning that the expectation of a fair chance was utopian, entrenches himself in the firm belief that the only reliable choices open to them were illicit. The road to realising this ambition is lined with real dangers. Would they prevail? And if indeed they would, what prices are there to be paid… and, perhaps, more importantly, of what texture would their residual soul be?