Waiting for an Angel

by HABILA HELON

• ISBN13: 9780393051933
• ISBN10: 0393051935
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

Summary

The generation-defining successor to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. 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 general; 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. Helon Habila's vivid, exciting, and heart-wrenching debut opens a window onto a world in some ways familiar-with its sensuously depicted streets, student life, and vibrant local characters-yet ruled by one of the world's most corrupt and oppressive regimes, a scandal that ultimately drives Lomba to take a risk in the name of something greater than himself. Habila captures the energy, sensitivity, despair, and stubborn hope of a new African generation with a combination of gritty realism and poetic beauty.

Author Biography

Helon Habila is currently a fellow at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	9	(4)
Lomba	13	(32)
The Angel	45	(8)
Bola	53	(32)
Alice	85	(24)
Lomba	109	(12)
Kela	121	(68)
James	189	(34)
Afterword	223