The Death of Vivek Oji – By Stephen Keim
Author: Akwaeke Emezi
Publisher: Faber
Reviewer: Stephen Keim
Akwaeke Emezi, the author of The Death of Vivek Oji, is a person of non-binary gender who uses the plural pronouns, they, them and their, for self-referral. Emezi’s father is a Nigerian Igbo person and their mother is of Indian Tamil heritage. Emezi was born in 1987 in Umuahia in Abia State, Nigeria but raised in Aba, also, in Abia State, Nigeria. Aba is the most populous city in south eastern Nigeria with of population over two and a half million people. It is surrounded by villages including the village of Owerri. Emezi obtained a Masters in Public Administration from New York University and a degree in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Syracuse University.
The Death of Vivek Oji is set in towns and villages around Aba. Most of the characters are part of a community of mixed race families with the fathers and husbands Nigerian Igbo men and the mothers hailing from various countries and referring to themselves as Niger wives.
The novel is set in a period of social unrest where persons branded as thieves might be “necklaced” by out of control mobs. A dictator has died to much rejoicing but the threat or promise of elections divides the people and generates a potential for violence to break out at any time.
This is not a good time to be coming of age. It presents particular difficulty if one is plagued by absences resembling petit-mal seizures and discovering a gender identification that is non-binary. This was the coming of age faced by Vivek who lends his name to the title.
As a pre-teen, I read Nevil Shute’s Requiem for a Wren. I loved it. When I discussed the novel with an older sibling, he suggested that there was a sort of pointlessness to a novel, even a who-dunnit, which starts with the death of the main protagonist.
The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel which starts with the death of its main protagonist. The first chapter consists of a single sentence: “They burned down the market on the day that Vivek Oji died”. Vivek’s body is found on his parents’ doorstep by his mother strangely naked but wrapped in fabric of some kind with a terrible gash to his head. Whether my sibling was correct or not in his assessment, The Death of Vivek Oji was always going to finish where it started.
Emezi uses a number of narrative methods during the course of the novel. The burden of narration is borne, mainly, by the omniscient third party. But Vivek, speaking from the other side, and his cousin, Osita, have cameo narrating roles at key stages. The view from inside the head is something not even the omniscient can do properly.
The Death of Vivek Oji is, at times, a family history, plunging back two generations to encompass the death of a grandmother; the respective courtships of two brothers; and the birth of the cousins whose lives (and the death of one), ultimately, are the centrepiece of the novel. That is not to say that the broader, family and community narrative is not important. Emezi is painting a social picture of life at a certain time in a part of Nigeria that, one suspects, reflects their childhood. Finding and courting one’s love and experiencing the changes that time brings to marriage, especially, marriage between people from different countries and different cultures is also important. The Death of Vivek Oji is not just a non-binary gender coming of age novel. It is just such a novel set in a particular time and place and society.
For a time, Vivek is lost and alone. Being the person he has discovered himself to be puts him into conflict with just about everybody including his parents and his closest aunt and uncle. He finds understanding, space and acceptance in a group of friends, his own age, his cousin, Osita, and four girls, Ju Ju and Elizabeth (who have their own journey of self-discovery) and the sisters, Olunne and Somto.
The Death of Vivek Oji is also a who-dunnit. The actual circumstances of the death, that which we had thought we knew from every significant fact dropped along the way, turns out not to be the case. I found the true cause to be disappointing and strangely anti-climactic and almost a betrayal of me as the reader.
Perhaps, however, Emezi is telling us that life’s dangers are more unpredictable than we think and that FDR was right when he spoke of fear, itself, being also something to fear. As CS Lewis told us, the deeper truth is there to be discovered.
Stephen Keim
Clayfield
20 August 2021
