Blog tour: The Nigerian Mafia: Mumbai

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Welcome to the blog tour for The Nigerian Mafia: Mumbai by Onyeka Nwelue!

More about the book…

Nollywood actor, Uche Mbadiegwu leaves his Surulere neighbourhood 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.

More about 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.

My impressions…

With this book I went way outside my reading comfort zone, and I am happy I did. The cover and the Indian setting were the elements that attracted me first, but I do like books that are raw and unflinching. Uche Mbadiegwu, our main character, is an ambiguous, morally grey, and very possibly unreliable narrator. We only hear his story from his point of view, as a sort of confession, so it is up to the reader to decide what to believe – or not. Not a cozy read but I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Three words to describe it. Raw. Unforgiving. Compelling.

Do I like the cover? Yes, it’s striking.

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, I wasn’t aware of this author before.

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