Caught by the shadows of 'African realism'

A tale of brotherly love and murder portrays colonial past

The favorite Chinese writer of the Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma right now is Yan Lianke, who came up with what he calls spiritual realism to represent his pursuit for "invisible truth" in his novels. Obioma says that in his novel The Fishermen he tried to represent a kind of realism that may seem superstitious and unbelievable to Westerners or Asians, something he calls African realism.

Last year Obioma gained much attention in the West when The Fishermen, his debut novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in Britain and included by many media such as the Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times on their lists of best fiction of the year.