Elnathan John

A domestic drama/soap opera set in Lagos, Nigeria. At the center of this book is an evil man -- rapist, homophobe, fraud, hypocrite -- who gets off too easy in the end, with most of his tiny comeuppance happening "off screen" as it were. So even if parts of the book are engaging, it is not worth wading through all the rape, homophobia, and a suicide.

The art is mediocre with some characters barely looking the same from panel to panel. The writing makes use of a lot of African dialect and Pidgin English that was occasionally difficult for me to follow. It's also choppy and seemed to frequently skip over important moments.

This reminds me of the much better Aya of Yop City series by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie.… (mere)

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/John-Ne-un-mardi/1007345

> Dantala vit dans la rue avec les voyous de Bayan Layi, fume la wee-wee sous le baobab, fait le coup de poing pour le Petit Parti. Souvent, les bagarres tournent mal mais, comme on dit, tout ce qui arrive est la volonté d'Allah. Un soir d'émeutes, pris en chasse par la police, il doit s'enfuir. Sans famille, il trouve refuge à Sokoto auprès d'un imam salafiste. Il apprend l'anglais avec son ami Jibril, tombe amoureux, psalmodie l'appel à la prière, lit tout ce qu'il peut.
Le gamin naïf mais curieux découvre l'étendue de ses contradictions et la liberté de la pensée, et gagne sa place et son nom dans un monde chaotique et violent. Alors que les tensions entre communautés ne cessent de croître, un imam irascible fait sécession et part à la campagne fonder une secte extrémiste. Loin de l'exotisme et du tiers-mondisme bien-pensant, Elnathan John nous emmène dans une région dont on ignore presque tout : harmattan, poussière des routes, vendeurs de koko, et le goût du dernier morceau de canne à sucre – le meilleur.
On brandit des machettes, on assiste à des matchs de lutte, on prend toutes sortes de transports, on marche, on court, on aime, on est Dantala de bout en bout, passionnément. Un formidable roman d'apprentissage, sensible et poignant, dont on sort complètement retourné ...
--LeFigaro.fr… (mere)

A book that deserves wide readership. A novel by a Nigerian writer of the life of a young man, a muslim, born into typical rural poverty in the north of the country. Lack of money, opportunity and education sends him away from home at a young age to a traditional religious school. The straightforward timeline of a plot follows him from street crime to trusted administrator and fixer at a mosque in Sokoto. Along the way his experience mirrors recent political events in Nigeria with the growth and threat of Boko Haram, though the movement is never named as such by the author. To a non Nigerian, non Muslim everyday life is used to illustrate the bigger picture. A well told story with great relevance. The author is not a stylist by any means and lets his imagination flow only intermittently especially during a passage on detention and torture, all too routine, in police cells.… (mere)