About The Book
An abusive father is forced out of safety to find his runaway son in a world where males are going extinct and female monarchs have resorted to drastic methods to ensure continuity of the Nigerian race.
An Ogbanje travels to a near post-apocalyptic Nigeria from the past with a solution even she is not aware of.
In a Nigeria where the British never left, a white boy who lives in Lagos seizes a banned book from one of his father’s Nigerian household serfs and their friendship yields a disastrous consequences in Passion Fruit.
In We Won’t Fade into Darkness the past and future comes to a head, indiscriminate exploitation of oil eventually yields Nigerium, a gaseous element that poisons air, destroys reproductive organs and drives people insane.
The common thread in these stories, apart from the country of its setting is the lifeblood of every indigene, hope.
Book Review
Why worry now
You’ll be safe
Hold my hand
Just in case
And we won’t fade into darkness
Fade into darkness
No we won’t fade into darkness
Fade into darkness
– Avicii
I’d say it’s an honour for me to get to read such an awesome short story collection by TJ Benson. Thanks to Parresia Publishers, I have been given an opportunity to look into the future Nigeria, to envisage what it will be like in the future, to decide for myself if I would love to live the life’s the Nigerians in this story lived.
This is the first time am reading a very deeply realistic and powerful book, a book that brings me to the realization of the effect most of the things done in present nigeria—mostly overlooked—might have in the future, I also felt the air of loss for all the things we have now that wasn’t there in the future Nigeria this book showed.
At a point I thought it had happened, and then I wondered what it will be like, If we had a killing mountain where people went to kill themselves when they were tired of life. I wondered what it will be like when religion no longer mattered to the extent that a child won’t even know how to pronounce ‘Jesus’ correctly.
I wondered what it will be like in a world where we could fly and converse with animals. In a world where death is no longer feared but awaited. In a world where speaking in your own language becomes an abomination. In a world where a gaseous poison in the air called ‘Nigerium’ would wreak havoc, separate children from their mother, run people mad and poison their brains.
While reading this book I absorbed a lot of the emotions they felt, because the stories felt very real…
In that day even women will take hold of one man
And say ‘we will eat our own food and provide our own clothes
Only let us be called by your name
Take away our disgrace!’
Isaiah 4:1
– Jidenna… We Won’t Fade Into Darkness…
In the future, where women abounds, men have gone in hiding because the women have taken over and the men are being forced to marry them and have children, where the children of the present world don’t know or care about what Nigeria used to be like in the past.
In the future where poets can no longer express themselves, their love for words and papers are being banned, a man gets an abundance of yellow paper and even though he’s on the verge of death for disobeying the rules of the country, at the end of it all he holds on to the hope that even after he dies…
… We won’t fade into darkness
We won’t fade into darkness is a book I will love to go back to again and again… To enjoy the dark world that I HOPE will never be ours.
I give this book 4.7 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐?
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When I read the description above I thought it sounded very grim and dark but curious. Then I read your review and I’m hooked. It’s sure dark and grim but it sounds thought-provoking and that’s the main thing I need from books (this, and very good writing). I’ll remember this book for later. I definitely want to read it now.
Awww… Thank you so much. I did enjoyed the book and I hope you will get to read it. Am sure you will love it too. ?
PS: I love the visual representation of stars that you came up with, this sparkley star to represent not a full one. ??
???? Ah ah. Thanks. I didn’t know anyone noticed ???
It’s very visible from the phone, I don’t know yet how it looks from the computer. I also always look at ratings so I wanted to check. I was first impressed with the precision of your rating and then I wanted to check how exactly you would express it with stars and saw this sparkley star. It’s very clever, really.
Wow. You’re compliment made my day. Thank you, you have an interesting blog too??❣️
I just say what I think if I think anything interesting at all. ?