Waiting for an Angel

by Helon Habila

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393325113
• ISBN13: 9780393325119
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Good condition

I bought this product for my sis who is in college, so I cant speak for the content; however, the condition of the book was as described and the service was excellent.

Wow.....

At first I was a bit skeptical about reading this book, especially after hearing about the political undertones that defined it. But really, It's a good book worth exploring. Even now, after reading the whole thing, I'm haunted by the situations of the characters and what they go through everyday of their lives. The sex, the drugs, and everything that served as a temporary get-away dwindled in the face of violence and death. I'm Nigerian myself, and have lived during those turbulent times in the Abacha regime. Horrible, let me tell you. The novel depicts this atmosphere in a beautiful way. Please read this if you want a thrilling tale that will leave you thinking and breathless. I would have given this ten stars if possible! Good job Habila!

"It was a terrible time to be alive."

Lomba is a young aspiring novelist who is struggling to jump-start his writing career in the midst of chaos and rebellion in Nigeria during the 1990's. The brutal and corrupt Nigerian military government and their battle against pro-democracy demonstrations and sympathizers while simultaneously distancing themselves from other nations form the backdrop of this wonderful and poignant novel. Although Lomba does not actively join his classmates and colleagues in their dangerous protests for human rights and government accountability he can't help but be immensely affected by the political events unfolding around him; he is a bystander who quickly becomes a victim of the circumstances.Written in non-chronological order WAITING FOR AN ANGEL keeps the reader on edge even though the ending is revealed in the first chapter. This novel is a fresh and evocative first-person narrative into the political instability of Nigeria and its effects on the everyday individual. Combining a mixture of historical people in credible, albeit horrifying, circumstances Habila has created wonderful highly textured characters that are at once believable and evoke reader empathy and emotion. As written in a previous review it is recommended to read the Afterword first as it contains essential political context for this novel. There is little doubt that Habila possesses talent as a novelist and I am looking forward to reading more from him. Highly recommended.

Days as black as pitch

Lomba is a political prisoner in Nigeria. He used to be a student in the capital city, Lagos, but then his roommate was attacked by soldiers and went mad. He used to be in love (perhaps he still is), but then his girl married a General with money. He used to be a journalist living on Poverty Street and writing for the Dial, but then the journalists were arrested and the Dial offices burned to the ground. And so he is in prison. WAITING FOR AN ANGEL starts out quietly sad, with Lomba already in prison, writing love poems for a prison superintendent in an effort to improve his lot. Whether he succeeds or not is speculated on but never really known, for the rest of the book is a flashback, told in first- and third-person accounts by Lomba and several others, including a 15-year-old boy sent to live with his aunt in Lagos as punishment for smoking marijuana. At times the reader learns about students fleeing their college; at other times about a small foods store and its twisted inhabitants. The jumps between time and place unfortunately do irreparable damage to the narrative's flow, but the prose is clean, the details sordid but evocative, and the desperation very real. The political unrest deepens and the death count rises as the demonstrations turn violent.When I started reading WAITING FOR AN ANGEL, I thought the angel in question would be one of freedom, one of hope, but I was wrong. It's the Angel of Death, who makes its appearance in the second chapter -- my favorite part of the book as I have often pondered what goes through people's minds as they are attacked by mobs and soldiers in toppling countries. Helon Habila does a skilled enough job in this debut novel of fear and frustration in 1990s despot-driven Nigeria that perhaps now I know. At the end of the narrative is an afterward describing the real-life crisis in Nigeria that fueled this small novel. Habila states that his goal was to capture the mood of those years, and in WAITING FOR AN ANGEL he has definitely outdone himself.

Important Stories, Dateline: Lagos, 1990s

Had George Orwell been a young Nigerian writer in Lagos in the 1990s, this is the book he might have written. Structurally, the book is comprised of seven short stories, which are arranged out of chronological sequence and vary from third person to first person narration. The opening piece is about a young journalist who is in his second year of imprisonment for being at a antigovernment demonstration. This is the story that won Habila the 2001 Caine Prize for African Writing, yet I found it to be the most banal portion of the book. The "writer in prison" is hardly a fresh subject, especially in African literature, and Habila doesn't take it anywhere it hasn't been before. Indeed, the warden's use of him to write love poems is straight out of a bad movie. This is just the setup though, as the rest of the stories "flashback" to journalist Lomba's life before prison.Despite various other narrators and characters, Lomba is the subject of the book, and through him one discovers its central theme: that those living under oppression can't pretend it doesn't exist, at some point they must stand up and denounce their rulers. This is unveiled through stories showing Lomba as a student, lover, struggling novelist, and arts reporter who tries his best to ignore the violence, poverty, and fear that permeate the city and country. The stories show the people around him going mad, having to compromise themselves, and being beaten by soldiers ("soja") for no reason. My own favorite section was also the longest, a 60+ page story narrated by a young country boy who is sent to Lagos to straighten up, and lives with his aunt in Lomba's old neighborhood. Eventually Lomba's mentor tells him he must stop pretending that he can live a normal life under a military dictatorship and he should be supporting those who have the courage to speak out. It's not a new message, but it is one that is evergreen.The book is very nicely written, with clean and evocative prose that captures the harsh reality of life under the "khakiocrastry." Using real events and real places, Habila skillfully blends fact with fiction to create an important glimpse into what will soon be the world's fifth largest city. Readers should note that the book's afterword is actually best read first, as it provides background on the Nigeria's politics that are essential context for the stories-indeed, it's puzzling that wasn't placed as a preface, since that's really what it ought to be.