Waiting for An Angel – A Novel - Softcover

Habila, Helon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393325113 ISBN 13: 9780393325119

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004

Synopsis

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. 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. Winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing 2001. Reading group guide included.

About this title

Review:

Tender, funny and compassionate.--Doris Lessing

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.

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.

Habila employs a prose whose spirituality recalls Wole Soyinka, Amilcar Cabral and King.--Wally Hammond

Brilliantly captures the reign of terror in Lagos in the 1990s.

In elegant, economical, and often lyrical prose, Habila captures the state of terror under which Nigerians were forced to live.

Like an angel, Habila has breathed new life into his world.

About the Author:

Helon Habila is the internationally renowned author of Waiting for an Angel, which won both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Caine Prize for African Writing, and Measuring Time and Oil on Water. He was born in Nigeria and now divides his time between America and Nigeria.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0393325113
• ISBN 13: 9780393325119
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240