Dangerous love

In the opening paragraphs of Dangerous Love, a novel first conceived more than 30 years ago (it is essen:ally a rewrite
of Okri’s The Landscapes Within, which was issued in 1981, for him the first was incomplete in the new one are some
important addi:ons) and first published in 1996. The epigraph is important because he describes the problem of
colonisa:on through the metaphors about vegetables/fruits. Suffering evil will turn into something good
“regenera:on”. A second meaning is that he is not only wri:ng for africans but for everyone ”all of us are suffering”. He
wants to be remembered as a world writer. In the epigraphy is an implicit ques:on for the reader, if there can be a
something posi:ve aPer all this suffering. In dirt are some sparkling of hope and the man has to make this sparkle
shine. Okra was always carrying with him a notebook and in the text are some of this extracts. At the beginning there
is a vision of a death girl, later a character. In the text are hypotext ( Hypotext is an earlier text which serves as the
source of a subsequent piece of literature, or hypertext. For example, Homer's Odyssey could be regarded as the
hypotext for James Joyce's Ulysses). The dark forest “selva oscura” represent the disorienta:on. Through art the
character will try to transform caos into harmony, an Apollonian view resembling the god Apollo. (Friedrich Nietzsche
used the term in his book The Birth of Tragedy to describe one of the two opposing tendencies or elements in Greek
tragedy. According to Nietzsche, the Apollonian aZributes are reason, culture, harmony, and restraint. These are
opposed to the Dionysian characteris:cs of excess, irra:onality, lack of discipline, and unbridled passion). The story
starts in medias res, and only reading the book we will know more about the main character. In the dialogues we have
a pidgin english (pidgin language, is a gramma:cally simplified means of communica:on that develops between two or
more groups that do not have a language in common), realis:c like the African way of speaking. The book cover of the
first edi:on represent a fawn (cerbiaZo) in the forest, maybe to evoke the feeling of being hunt without any reason.

The young protagonist is Omovo, a boy of about 19 living in the slumps, a poor place coming from a poor family. He
has his head shaved by an incompetent barber’s assistant plying his trade in the Lagos gheZo. Ini:ally it is not the
character’s inten:on to have all his hair removed in such drama:c fashion, but a bungled haircut leads to more dras:c
measures. In urban Nigeria of the late 1970s, where American disco (think afros and bell-boZoms) and high-life
fashions are the order of the day, his clean-shaven scalp gives the young ar:st a strange, haunted look which
immediately marks him as outsider. His neighbours and friends repeatedly ask him whether he is in mourning, which
he vehemently denies. The incident can be read as an extended metaphor which encapsulates many of this complex
novel’s central themes: the incompetence and unprofessionalism of the appren:ce echoes the incompetence of the
post-war government in Nigeria, represented by the vulgar military forces, no real democracy (the novel is set about a
decade aPer the cessa:on of hos:li:es in the horrific civil [Biafran] war which claimed the lives of over a million
Nigerians) – something Okri brings to the fore repeatedly. The novel portrays the country’s ci:zenry as trapped rats,
trauma:sed by violence and horror, now collec:vely gnawing away at the social fabric of their society. Unemployment
is rife, violence is prevalent and a menacing atmosphere permeates the air. Omovo con:nuously refers to the “miasma
of Lagos life”. Typical of africans living blocks there were common areas where women prepare food together, there
were sharing toilets. Secret socie:es indulge in sinister prac:ces. The occult and spirit world are present in the lives of
characters – spirit children, strange dreams and a ritual murder are some of the things Omovo is confronted with
during the course of the novel. The protagonist’s decision to mark himself visually as outsider reflects and echoes his
sense of isola:on and disaffectedness – something he struggles with throughout the story. At the same :me it is a
defiant act which allows him to take some small measure of ownership of his iden:ty as an ar:st, his dream was to
become a painter. His pain:ng are not happy pain:ngs but more realis:c, represen:ng real life situa:on, an amputee
tree (uses amputee instead of cut to remember the cruelty that africans lived both moral and physical, and Africa as a
na:on where all the food is “stolen” to feed other and not the africans, a rich country with poor people) around the
tree were children naked and skinny suffering hunger and poverty. Another important pain:ng is the one made by
Doctor Okocha that was a pain:ng about a strong wrestler, (wrestling was common in African tradi:on to show power
and strength), Doctor Okocha paint to sell the pain:ng he represent the “compromise”, selling art to live, “survive”, he
will find :ckets to bring Omovo to see an exhibi:on. Omovos art is a signifier which lets him announce his individuality
and displays his recogni:on of the impact of powerful, rebellious visual statements. His art becomes the only means
through which he can empower himself in this fraught society, elevate himself and pursuit higher projects. He uses
charcoal to draw and to draw really “dark”, “black”. Lastly, but most crucially (and despite his denials to the contrary),
Omovo is most certainly a man in mourning – and will remain one for the dura:on of this tale. He mourns for his long-
suffering and abused dead mother, for his truculent, cash-strapped, alcoholic father, for his two banished brothers, for
the deplorable state of the na:on, and, most certainly, for his own overwhelming sense of purposelessness. His
stepmother was younger than the father and some:mes vulgar. Forced to drop out of school without comple:ng his
final exams (due to lack of funds) Omovo is employed as a clerk in a chemical supply company – a job he abhors for its
boredom and for the climate of corrup:on he finds himself inhabi:ng. His quietly defiant displays of moral rec:tude
(he stubbornly refuses to succumb to the bribing tac:cs of clients) and stand-offishness make him unpopular as a co-
 Dangerous love

worker. His boss is eager to be rid of him and replace him with a down and out nephew willing to display the
obsequiousness required of this type of entry-level posi:on. (Some of the novel’s more grimly amusing passages are
those describing Omovo’s interac:ons with his colleagues.) Omovo’s home life is similarly unpleasant and tense. He
lives in a dingy apartment in a run-down compound with his father and the laZer’s calcula:ng second wife, Blackie. His
father has booted his two rebellious brothers out. These two young men send cryp:c leZers home hin:ng at sordid
lives at sea as stowaways and sailors. There are lurid descrip:ons of filthy communal bathrooms in the compound.
Squalor and lack of privacy are emphasised, as well as the hunger for scandal and gossip among commune dwellers.
(There is a large pool of viscous scum, references to James Joyce “the sea was a snot color”, outside the apartments
which later becomes the subject of a pain:ng by Omovo, seized by military officials at a gallery opening because, they
declare, that it “undermines na:onal authority and the na:on’s progress”.) Yet Okri does balance this bleak view with
some charming and jolly interac:ons between these down-and-out neighbours. It is not all Sturm und Drang, though
everyone seems to be hanging on by a very thin thread. Omovo’s friends, whom he sees only occasionally, are Keme,
an earnest and principled young journalist, Okur, a slightly older man in his late twen:es who served as a child soldier
during the war and who clearly suffers from post-trauma:c stress disorder, and Dele, a rich friend who, despite having
impregnated his girlfriend, plans to flee Nigeria for the great white hope represented by America. Each friend is
tortured by his own demons, and while the young men seem to have sincere regard for one another, they are all adriP
on the same existen:alist sea and can do liZle to really alleviate or solve one another’s problems. The two things that
thus keep Omovo going in this depressing state are his clandes:ne friendship with Ifeyiwa, a beau:ful young married
woman living in a neighbouring compound with her possessive and violent husband, Takpo, and his art work.
Mentored by a kindly Igbo signwriter cum painter, Doctor Okocha, Omovo uses drawing and pain:ng to express and
grapple with his angst and overwhelming sense of aliena:on and ennui. His rela:onship with Ifeyiwa, who had been
ripped away from her schooling (gender role) and forced into an arranged marriage by her impoverished family, offers
both young people a modicum of emo:onal and intellectual solace. They discuss books, poetry and art. They find
themselves to be kindred spirits and develop a passionate bond. While they know their love is doomed, they cannot
stay away from each other. Ifeyiwa, even more so than Omovo, cuts a tragic figure: warm, passionate and intelligent,
she is trapped in a loveless and abusive union with an intractable and jealous man. Like Omovo’s father, Takpo expects
tradi:onal patriarchal mores to be respected and adhered to (gender role), even here, in a more urbanised
environment. Both these men are bullies who take out their feeling of disempowerment and humilia:on on those they
deem weaker than themselves. It is to Okri’s credit that they are not, however, portrayed as one-dimensional bullies.
In fact, all his central characters are complex, mul:faceted and interes:ng.
The novel is ambi:ous in its scope and complex in its rendering. The author’s prose veers between colourful social
realism and more surrealist passages which reflect Omovo’s inner life and nightmare visions of his society. The laZer
make for difficult, and at :mes laborious, reading. While the young man’s “angst” (It is used in English to describe an
intense feeling of apprehension, anxiety, or inner turmoil) and his emo:onal highs and lows are convincingly captured,
it can be hard going for the reader. There is also some fascina:ng inter-textual interplay. Many of Okri’s vivid surrealist
passages as well as the novel’s themes reminded me of Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah’s seminal text, The Beautyful
Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), in which a nameless male protagonist struggles to come to terms with endemic
corrup:on in post-independence Ghana. Like Omovo, that protagonist refuses to take bribes, and suffers the
consequences. Like Omovo, he quietly endures, but with constantly eroding for:tude. It is interes:ng to note that in
one of the last few chapters of Dangerous Love, Omovo works on a pain:ng of a young vic:m of a ritual murder he and
Keme had horrifyingly stumbled upon in a city park. He considers naming the pain:ng The Beau?ful Ones, but then
reconsiders. We are told that he “wanted to use his own words”. Perhaps this could be read as Okri’s
acknowledgement of the influence of the Armah text on his own wri:ng?
In the same passage we are told that years later Omovo will rework this pain:ng (now :tled Related Losses), “vainly
trying to complete what he knew was beyond comple:on, trying to realise a fuller pain:ng on a founda:on whose
frame is set forever … succumbing to the dangerous process of looking back, making himself suffer a long penance for
a past ar:s:c shame at a work unrealised by youthful craP”. This seems to be an allusion to Okri’s own decision to
revise and rework The Landscapes Within into the present novel. (His author’s note also explains a liZle of this
process.) At the end of the book his drawing disappeared, there was “no safety”, he remembered a young man asking
to buy his drawing so maybe he stole it. He felt a feeling of lost. A lot of years later he will see a book and the cover of
the book was his stolen drawing. A biZer meaning about white people stealing from Africa. The drawing was published
anonymously there was no individuality in africa everything seemed to be “communal”. Even in the exhibi:on he saw
vulgarity when they were talking about art. While Dangerous Love is not without its flaws, it is a haun:ng tale that
both effec:vely dissects post-war Nigerian society and poses some interes:ng ques:ons about the role of the ar:st in
a ravaged world. While a love story lies at its core, its scope and themes are more far-reaching. Most chillingly, it
reflects and echoes many of the problems we face in South African society today: corrup:on, a disaffected youth, high
 Dangerous love

unemployment figures, ar:s:c and media censorship, violence against women, and the struggles of tradi:onalism
versus modernism. Omovo reflects in one scene: “He thought about the entanglement of bureaucracy and corrup:on
that had spread throughout society. He thought about the older genera:on, how they had squandered and stolen
much of the country’s resources, eaten up its future, weakened its poten:al, enriched themselves, got fat, created
chaos everywhere, poisoned the next genera:on, and spread rashes of hunger throughout the land.”
Okri bears witness to his country’s tragic moral and economic decline. It could be said that a novel like this should
serve as a prophe:c warning, but unfortunately, here in South Africa we may already be too deep in the quagmire. The
rot has set in.