Cross-cultural exchanges

The 18 stories, each around a dozen pages long, in E.C. Osondu’s Voice of America seem to have poured out of him like water. They have a fluency, an evenness of tone and texture, that creates an illusion of transparency and simplicity.

The 18 stories, each around a dozen pages long, in E.C. Osondu’s Voice of America seem to have poured out of him like water. They have a fluency, an evenness of tone and texture, that creates an illusion of transparency and simplicity.

There’s great comedy — and also artistry — in this because almost every story actually describes some degree of false consciousness, wrong-headedness or pathetic illusion. Life is not transparent or legible to Osondu’s characters: it is like a series of painted cloth stage-sets which are repeatedly yanked away, punctured or torn, without ever revealing more than a fleeting glimpse of the real state of things behind.

Osondu is Nigerian.