Ikenna Okeh

A book review of ‘Rogues of the East’ by Ebri Kowaki - How Ikenna Okeh has cleared a new pathway for Nigerian crime fiction. Daring and imaginative Nigerian novelists have published crime novels every other year since 2010. Like dynamite going off underwater, it is creating a great splash. And that splash is what this review analyses.

This is a saga of an African tribe who lived a long time ago; a very long time before the coming of the first Europeans to their part of the world. It is a narrative verse which finely blends the elements of prose and poetry to tell a story that takes the reader over distant lands, to bear witness to the exploits of a people whom the reader would never otherwise get to see.

If you are yet sprightly, But with fear saddled upon your heart; Bearing weightily on your self-will And encumbering your every step, Then stand before a mirror and look closely You will find that thou art no youth.