Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth: A Novel

Love the sarcasm. Fiance is from Nigeria, so be is really enjoying it.

Of the 219 reviewers of this book since it was released on Amazon a year ago, only 50% seem to have been able to finish it, even if they claim it was a difficult read. The other 50% could not get more than halfway because of its laborious plot, complex characters, and convoluted language. Although I've never been to Nigeria, I was born and raised on the African continent; so, I can relate to the witchdoctor beliefs, bizarre culture and corrupt leadership, but I'm having difficulty getting my teeth into the haphazard style to stay the course. I may try again, or I may decide life's too short to struggle with inaccessible literature.

A book o read

Beautifully written but hard to follow by anyone not familiar with Nigeria. The book is set in fictional Nigeria but for someone not familiar with Africa it's hard to separate sarcasm from real issues.

Baba needs another Nobel Prize, great job prof.

Post colonial literature is my area but this is overblown and confusing. I couldn’t finish it.

This isn't an easy read. I actually started it more than once. But once I was hooked, that was it! This has everything you want in an alternate Nigeria, with lots of colorful characters, including several priests and healers and human body parts traffickers.

What a wonderful convoluted path through a convoluted part of the world. Sometimes tough to keep a scorecard of all the players. But a delightful read nonetheless.

What the hell is this? English is not my native language, but I have a master's degree from an English speaking, Anglo-Saxon country as well as writing and talking in English almost as much as in my native language (if not more, at times). But this book is hard to read. It's not like I dont understand it. I do understand what's going on. But it seems to me the author tries artifically to use complicated words and sentence structures. It just does not seem fun or leisure-ly to read it. If I want to read complex English language literature, I'd prefer to read Shakespeare, at least that is real poetry.

Es ist mir leider vollkommen unverständlich, warum dieses Buch so gelobt wird. Mir war es nahezu unmöglich den Handlungsstrang zu erkennen, die Personen einzuordnen und den roten Faden zu finden. Sprachlich ebenfalls keinesfalls ein Highlight.

A present to someone that really appreciated it.

We read this for our book club and we all agreed that the first part of the book is not an easy read but that it really pays off to persist with it. Half way through the book I struggled to understand how all the characters related to each other and how it all added up but this made it all the more impressive when everything was all tied together so satisfactorily at the end. If I'm honest, I probably wouldn't have stuck with it after reading the first 100 pages but as it was for my book club I had to and I'm so glad I did. Haven't read anything quite like this before and I hope this review inspires you to keep with it.

Immense fun from the first sentence with lots of laugh out loud moments. It's a very bitter satire in loose baggy monster form that reminded me a lot of late Victorian satirical fiction, exuberant, confident and energetic. In the end though it's tragic in its merciless denunciation of corruption and selfishness at every level.