A Bit of Difference (Interlink World Fiction) - Softcover

Atta, Sefi

3.44

447 ratings by Goodreads

9781566569668: A Bit of Difference (Interlink World Fiction)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566569664 ISBN 13: 9781566569668

Publisher: Interlink Books, 2014

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From the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature. At thirty-nine, Deola Bello, a Nigerian expatriate in London, is dissatisfied with being single and working overseas. Deola works as a financial reviewer for an international charity, and when her job takes her back to Nigeria in time for her father's five-year memorial service, she finds herself turning her scrutiny inward. In Nigeria, Deola encounters changes in her family and in the urban landscape of her home, and new acquaintances who offer unexpected possibilities. Deola's journey is as much about evading others' expectations to get to the heart of her frustration as it is about exposing the differences between foreign images of Africa and the realities of contemporary Nigerian life. Deola's urgent, incisive voice captivates and guides us through the intricate layers and vivid scenes of a life lived across continents. With Sefi Atta's characteristic boldness and vision, A Bit of Difference limns the complexities of our contemporary world. This is a novel not to be missed.

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About the Author:

Sefi Atta is the author of two previous novels, Swallow and Everything Good Will Come, and a collection of short stories, News from Home, all published by Interlink Books. She has been awarded the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa. Her novels have been published around the world and translated into numerous languages, and her radio and stage plays have been performed internationally. She was born in Lagos and now lives in Mississippi.

Review:

"Atta, winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature for Everything Good Will Come (2006), delivers on the promise of her well-received early work with this breakout which is at once an American successor to classic Nigerian literature and a commentary on how the English-speaking world reads Africa. Lagos born Deola Bello enjoys her job in the London office of an international charity organization, but sees how her home country is sold abroad and is all too aware of the Western attitudes that cling to her African friends, like the intellectual Bandele and the born-again Subu, while shaping the perception of her English schoolfellows and American colleagues. But unlike Bandele, Deola still considers herself Nigerian, and a trip home to visit her widowed mother and testy, troubled siblings - all coping with the legacy of their autocratic father - provides Atta with the opportunity to examine the realities of modern African life, from HIV to the upwardly-mobile Diaspora. Like Teju Cole's Open City, Deola s story is low on drama but rich in life, though Atta s third-person voice makes less for a portrait of a mind in transit than a life caught in freeze-frame, pinned between two continents and radiating pathos. Wholly believable, especially in its nuanced approach to racial identity, the story feels extremely modern while excelling at the novelist s traditional task: finding the common reality between strangers and rendering alien circumstances familiar."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Atta's splendid writing sizzles with wit and compassion. This is an immensely absorbing book." --
-Chika Unigwe, author of On Black Sisters Street

"An up-close portrait of middle-class Nigeria exploring the boundaries of morals and public decorum. Pitched between humor and despair, with stripped-down, evocative prose, A Bit of Difference bristles with penknife-sharp dialogue, but its truths are more subtle, hiding in the unspoken. Ultimately, A Bit of Difference explores -with a hint of mischief-the problem of how to look like you have no problems when you have abundant problems-the universal problem of the socially-motivated classes."
--Nii Parkes, author of Tail of the Blue An up-close portrait of middle-class Nigeria exploring the boundaries of morals and public decorum. Pitched between humor and despair, with stripped-down, evocative prose, Ultimately, A Bit of Difference explores -with a hint of mischief-the problem of how to look like you have no problems when you have abundant problems-the universal problem of the socially-motivated classes."

--
-Nii Parkes, author of Tail of the Blue Bird

"

A Bit of Difference

This detailed novel from Atta (Everything Good Will Come), winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature and NOMA Award for Publishing in Africa, features 39-year-old Deola Bello, a Nigerian financial reviewer who works for an international charity in London. Her job takes her back to Nigeria just as her family holds her father s five-year memorial service. She had not been home for those five years, so while there she is observant and active, coming to numerous realizations that challenge and change her. The novel addresses various social issues, including intercultural expectations and HIV, but is far from preachy. Verdict Atta s characters are multidimensional, with Deola s voice particularly impressive, and the vividly painted events feel real. Throughout, Atta successfully evokes intense emotion. Recalling Rula Jebreal s Miral, this work will appeal to all readers of contemporary African literature. --Library Journal

The idea that literature should have some educational or moral function has fallen out of fashion. Sure, readers want a believable reflection of reality in the fiction they read, but more often than not, the mirror contemporary authors hold up to nature has been fitted with an Instagram-esque filter the colours are brighter, the outlines clearer, the contrast deeper, resulting in a portrait of uncanny (un)familiarity.
It s rare to come across a novel so devoid of artifice and literary pyrotechnics as Nigerian-born, American-dwelling Sefi Atta s A Bit of Difference; rarer to find so stripped down a work as compelling as this one; and rarer still, perhaps, to find an African novel that one can t praise for its larger-than-life exoticism and bold, colourful, rhythmic writing.
It should come as no surprise that Atta s also a playwright, because much of the novel is conversation between characters and she demonstrates a skilful control of the narrative, managing the pace and delivery perfectly. Everything about this novel is real and tangible; it s a truthful and deeply thoughtful portrait of the contemporary African diaspora corruption, crime, bigotry, Aids and malaria versus cultural disassociation and ingrained, but ignored, racism. --The National February 2014

Difference is both desired and feared by the characters in this thought-provoking novel by Nigerian author Sefi Atta, acclaimed by Teju Cole as one of the leading writers of her generation and winner of the inaugural Wole Soyinka prize for literature.

Bored with the monotony of her life in London, Deola Bello craves a bit of difference but can't decide whether the change she desires is one of location or job, or indeed some kind of inner transformation. Geographical change comes when Deola's job working for an international charity foundation takes her back to her native Nigeria, and yet it is not the country or family she once knew, not the one she left behind.

Not only are characters marked by their difference racially and culturally, but Atta also considers societal pressures: the protagonist is still single at 39, and her inner conflict is between the "urge to nest", to marry or maintain her independence. The burden of expectations is weighty. Should she maintain her difference or resort to sameness? Through her friendship with Wale, a hotelier, she eventually learns how our relationships can irrevocably transform us.

When society changes around us, what happens if we do not adapt; what happens when we change and society fails to move on? A new generation of Nigerian novelists are tackling such questions and shedding light on corruption. Atta hones a distinctive voice to tell a memorable if uneven story about the quest to preserve uniqueness faced with pressure to conform.

Music is interwoven throughout, from Marvin Gaye to ballads, and it is music that makes these characters feel comfortable in their strangeness.

Not only does Atta consider the differences between places, between people, but conversely the extent to which we are the same. --The Guardian