Chuma Nwokolo

Diaries of a Dead African Chuma Nwokolo

Diaries of a Dead African is a merciless comedy that explores the life-threatening situations of three protagonists, the farmer Meme Jumai and his two sons - Abel (failed writer) and Calamatus (aspiring conman). Meme's wife has left him with the bulk of his barn. He has a few tubers to last until harvest. Can he stretch it? Will his friends and relatives help out? Calamatus' break has finally come after an apprenticeship to a con-artist. Can he survive wealth as readily as he did, poverty? Finally Abel's manuscripts are attracting attention, but not, as he discovers, for their literary value... his fondest dreams were on the verge of realisation, yet his father had died at 50 and his brother at 25. How to outlive them both, without fleeing the very opportunities he had craved all his life.