The Nigerian Mafia: Mumbai by Onyeka Nwelue

And now for something completely different! Today I'm closing the blog tour for The Nigerian Mafia: Mumbai by Onyeka Nwelue. This is the first book in a planned series of ten, based in some of the many places the author has visited. May thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for the invitation and to the publisher for my review copy.

 

The Blurb

Nollywood actor, Uche Mbadiegwu leaves his Surulere neighborhood in Lagos, to Bandra in Mumbai to join Bollywood, so he could make it big, hoping to play exceptional roles. Like a flash, Periwinkle appears in his life and changes everything. Tired of living in a pigsty, Efemena wants to live a life in independence, but there is more to being a Nigerian in Mumbai – a constant escape from Indian police and narcotics agents. The Nigerian Mafia is a tale of violence, drugs, human trafficking, murder and sex.

The Nigerian Mafia: Mumbai is published by Enklima, an imprint of Abibiman Publishing, and came out on 4th April 2023.

 

My Review

Actor Uche has been successful in Nollywood, the Nigerian film business but he dreams of more. So he leaves his home and community in Lagos and moves to Mumbai, with hopes of making it big in Bollywood. But things don't quite work out like that and Uche ends up living a very different life from the one he'd imagined. 

This was a very different book for me but I was drawn to it to find out more about different countries and cultures. And The Nigerian Mafia: Mumbai certainly gave me a window to learn a little about Nigerian culture, and Indian also. When we meet Uche it is clear early that things have not turned out as he hoped they might. The book is written in the first person, feels like he is directly addressing the reader. It feels like a letter, or maybe a confession.   Parts of it are written in Pidgin English which was a surprise. I found some of it a little difficult to understand but loved seeing it there as it's a language I'm not familiar with at all. 

I'm not sure how I feel about Uche. He tells us he will be totally honest with us, and maybe he is, but he feels like an unreliable narrator. I was never sure that I could trust him! He never really tries very hard to follow his dream but falls very easily into drug dealing. Interestingly, all the dealers we meet are Nigerians - clearly finding legitimate work in Mumbai is not easy for them. Uche fits in with them well, but would have us believe he is better than them somehow. He considers himself a good man in a tough situation but he thinks nothing of dealing drugs or trafficking women. The supporting cast is full of colourful characters - cafe owner Efemena, Periwinkle who is crucial to Uche's story, Priscilla and Nasir, who I had a soft spot for - he's a good friend to Uche. And the author himself makes a brief cameo appearance! 

The Nigerian Mafia: Mumbai feels like a real story, a little exaggerated, of course, of what could happen to a young person alone and adrift in a foreign country, where crime is rife. But I loved how much I learned in this book about two cultures I knew nothing about. There are details of the Nigerian class system and the different regional languages. And also about the city of Mumbai. A really interesting read. 

The Author

Onyeka Nwelue is a Nigerian filmmaker, talk-show host, bookseller and author whose book, Hip-Hop is Only for Children won the Creative Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2015 Nigerian Writers’ Awards. He adapted his novella, Island of Happiness into an Igbo language film, Agwaetiti Obiụtọ and won Best Feature Film by a Director at 2018 Newark International Film Festival, and went on to be nominated for Best First Feature Film by a Director and the Ousmane Sembene Award for Best Film in an African Language at the 2018 Africa Movie Academy Awards.

He is the director of the Oxford-based James Currey Society and founder of La Cave Musik, a record label, based in Paris.