War Games

A tender coming-of-age story forged in the crucible of Biafra, War Games is a relentlessly candid and unsentimental reconstruction of a halcyon world suddenly shattered by hate, flight and strife. For Basil Chekwubechukwu Odukwe or Cheche, the good life as a rich landlord’s son in northern Nigeria suddenly turns nightmarish as the country descends into civil war. The five-year-old yet to know the meaning of Nigeria’s independence perforce escapes to his rural village of Amafor in the south to start a different life in the shadow of traumatized parents and relatives, war crimes and songs, folksy traditional pastimes and exacting Catholicism. In this haunting and very original first novel, Dulue Mbachu adroitly enters into the skull of childhood to tell a compelling human story with remarkable restraint and resonant narrative grace. - Uzor Maxim Uzoatu