New Nigerian Writing

Warscapes contributor Mike Ekunno's short story Village Christmas takes the readers on a journey through the celebrations in a Nigerian village told through the eyes and words of a young boy.

From the legendary Chinua Achebe to Ken Saro-Wiwa to the younger generation including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Abani and Helon Habila, readers and critics alike are now attuned to the range of excellent English language literature coming out of Nigeria. Warscapes magazine is delighted to introduce a new voice to the already vibrant Nigerian literary scene. Mike Ekunno's Village Christmasis the tale of young boy Obiora's desire to watch the village masquerade against his mother's wishes.Spanning the whole of Christmas day, this charming story paints a picture of a Nigerian village in the wake of the Biafran war. There is a mix of locals and “city-returnees”, as the lead categorizes his family and as the day progresses, the reader is taken through several traditions spanning deep Christian faith and local rituals like the masquerade revealing a multifaceted and diverse environment.

"When the adult church finally dismissed, color poured outdoors. Our parents were exchanging greetings with other members of the congregation. While Mummy and Daddy kept up with “Merry Christmas”, the locals were wont to wish them “Happy Krisimasi”. Even those of them who didn't ‘break the slate or chalk' somehow managed to cobble the words together. It would not be the first time genteel English language got mixed up in unlettered native tongues. During the war and immediately thereafter, it had been the misfortune of words like ‘saboteur', ‘camouflage', ‘air raid', ‘relief', ‘conscription' and ‘refugee' to suffer the same fate.”

About the Author

Mike Ekunno

is a writer who has also worked as senior speechwriter to Nigeria's last Information and Communications Minister. His short stories, essays and poems have been published in Nigeria Monthly, BRICKrhetoric, Cigale Literary Magazine, The Muse, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Miracle e-zine, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Bullet Pen and Storymoja, the last two publications coming as winning entries to continent-wide contests. The African Roar Anthology is billed to publish his fiction later this year. He has been a columnist with The Guardian on Sunday and contributes regularly to major Nigerian dailies and network radio commentary. He currently works in film classification and freelances as a book editor and proof reader.

About Warscapes

Warscapes publishes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, interviews, book and film reviews, photo-essays and retrospectives of war literature from the past fifty years.

Warscapes is motivated by a need to move past a void within mainstream culture in the depiction of people and places experiencing staggering violence, and the literature they produce.

Apart from showcasing great writing from war-torn areas, the magazine is a tool for understanding complex political crises in various regions and serves as an alternative to compromised representations of those issues.

Warscapes is an independent online magazine that provides a lens into current conflicts across the world.

However, it the masquerade that is at the heart of this tale and the boy's attempts at discovering the identity of the Nwipko, the harbinger of all festivities that is conjured through dancing and singing. This is a story of universal boyhood innocence told with a deceptively simple style as it unlocks a mystical and rather uniquely Nigerian ritual.

As the Christmas mass comes to an end, Ekunno deftly describes a village grappling with a complex heritage and more importantly, the way in which the war has changed it: