Waiting for An Angel A Novel [Paperback]

Lomba is a young journalist living under military rule in Lagos, Nigeria, the most dangerous city in the world. His mind is full of soul music and girls and the lyric novel he is writing. But his roommate is brutally attacked by soldiers; his first love is forced to marry a wealthy old man; and his neighbors on Poverty Street are planning a demonstration that is bound to incite riot and arrests. Lomba can no longer bury his head in the sand.In the middle of his second year in prison, Lomba got access to pencil and paper and he started a diary. It was not easy. He had to write in secret, mostly in the early mornings when the night warders, tired of peeping through the door bars, waited impatiently for the morning shift. Most of the entries he simply headed with the days of the week; the exact dates, when he used them, were often incorrect. The first entry was in July 1997, a Friday.This is a startlingly vivid novel....Habila paints an extraordinary tableau...bringing sounds, sights and smells to life with his spare prose and flair for metaphor.Brilliantly captures the reign of terror in Lagos in the 1990s.Habila leaves us a chink of hope, just as he leaves space for irony, love, heartbreak, and humor as the punches rain down....This is a beautifully judged work, powerful, compassionate and complete.In elegant, economical, and often lyrical prose, Habila captures the state of terror under which Nigerians were forced to live.Habila employs a prose whose spirituality recalls Wole Soyinka, Amilcar Cabral and King.Like an angel, Habila has breathed new life into his world.Tender, funny and compassionate. Habila's fictionalization...reveals the true casualties of oppression better than any news or history.