Blackass
Blackass is a novel by Nigerian author A.
Igoni Barrett. It was released in the United
Kingdom and Nigeria in 2015, and 2016 in the United States. It received mixed
reviews.
Plot summary
The
novel concerns Furo Wariboko, a Nigerian man, who wakes up one day to discover
that he has become white.
Reception
Reviewing
Blackass in the Financial
Times, Jon Day wrote: "From the
first sentence, Kafka’s
The Metamorphosis confronts you with the inherent strangeness of the pact you
make when you read fiction. Gregor Samsa has become an insect, Kafka says.
Suspend your disbelief. Take it or leave it. A Igoni Barrett’s first novel —
his third book — demands a similar response....to read him only as a Nigerian
writer would be to do him a disservice. For Blackass is a strange, compelling
novel, and Barrett has something to tell us all." Writing in The
Guardian, Helon
Habila said: "Igoni Barrett’s
greatest asset is his ability to satirise the ridiculous extents people,
especially Lagosians, go to in order to appear important." Claire Fallon
for the Huffington Post
concluded: "Blackass is a blunt, transparently written novel — the kind
that makes the reader feel as though they’re standing inside the skin of the
character, going about his day with him — and though the topic could easily be
that of a polemic, it’s also a subtle, circumspect novel about the
intersecting, sometimes mutually exclusive needs humans have for family and
connection, and for status and power." Aaron Bady of Okayafrica calls it "the most unapologetically Nigerian book that
American publishers have published in a long time, and as the 'Afropolitan'
has become an increasingly omnipresent strand of contemporary African
literature, there has been a steady backlash, both against the Afropolitan as
such, and against the entire category of African immigrant literature.
In
2016 Blackass won the People's Literature
Publishing House and the Chinese Foreign Literature
Society's 21st Century Best Foreign Novel Award. It was nominated for the
inaugural FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Awards, the 2017 PEN Open Book
Award, the 2015 Kitschies
Golden Tentacle Award, and the inaugural Nommo Award for Best Novel. In 2017 it
was nominated for a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the debut fiction category.
References
· Schaub, Michael (6 March 2016). "An
Audacious Transformation Bogs Down In 'Blackass'". NPR. Retrieved 17 July 2016.
· · Habila, Helon (14
August 2015). "Blackass
by A Igoni Barrett review – a cocktail of Kafka and comedy". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 July 2016.
· · Day, Jon (14
August 2015). "'Blackass',
by A Igoni Barrett".
Financial Times. Retrieved 17 July 2016.
· · Helon Habila, "Blackass
by A Igoni Barrett review – a cocktail of Kafka and comedy", The Guardian, 14 August 2015.
·
Claire Fallon, "The Bottom Line: ‘Blackass’ By A. Igoni
Barrett",
HuffPost Arts and Culture, 4 March 2016.
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