Nudibranchs are marine
gastropod molluscs known
for their wildly psychedelic
colour and mind-bending
multiplicity of forms. It is easy
to see why Nigerian British
author Irenosen Okojie has
chosen to name her second
volume of short stories after
this hermaphrodite, shape-
shifting creature. Her stories
may sometimes begin in
the mundane everyday but
they invariably spiral into
the weird and the phantas-
magorical. In ‘Kookaburra
Sweet’ a journalist misses
her flight home and, having
accepted a gift from a stran-
ger, finds herself turning into
what she eats. ‘Point and Trill’
begins with a married couple
bickering as they drive to a
get-together with friends and
rapidly morphs into a canni-
balistic gore-fest, daring the
reader to flinch.
Surrealism rather than
science fiction is Okojie’s stock
in trade but the most resonant
stories here have deep science
fiction roots. There are time-
travelling monks, magical-
realist albino architects and
grand guignol freak shows in
these pages. The strongest
story, ‘Saudade Minus One
(S-1=)’ takes us to a post-apoc-
alyptic landscape of horror-
mutations and nightmare
government experiments, a
world of sand and slag where,
despite the odds, love and ten-
derness take root.
A theme drifts through
these strange stories like
a ghost; the search, often
thwarted, for a home, an iden-
tity, a place of safety. Irenosen
Okojie’s perturbing tales,
replete as they are with dif-
ficult births and agonizing
deaths, will certainly not be
to everyone’s taste. Never-
theless, when her imagina-
tion and her lyrical writing
come together, her fantasti-
cal, disjointed tales speak for
our damaged, out-of-kilter
times. They are, to borrow her
phrase, full of warped, rhap-
sodic song. PWIn the dusty, desert heat of
Ain Issa Refugee Camp, 30
miles north of Raqqa, where
ISIS widows await their fate,
Commander Saleh of the
Syrian Democratic Force suc-
cinctly explains the premise
of Azadeh Moaveni’s excellent
book: ‘There are many paths
to militancy that aren’t about
militancy per se.’ In 2013,
17 per cent of all European
travellers to the Islamic State’s
burgeoning caliphate were
women, and Moaveni, who
has been covering the Middle
East as a journalist for nearly
two decades, wanted to learn
more about their motivations.
She discovered, not surpris-
ingly, that they were mani-
fold: religious zeal, a desire to
help suffering fellow-Muslims,youthful rebellion, escap-
ing unhappiness at home, the
search for a community and
the draw of the fantasy of a
new, promised land.
Guest House for Young
Widows offers an intimate
portrayal of 13 women –
including the Bethnal Green
schoolgirls whose defection to
Syria resulted in media hys-
teria that fuelled Islamopho-
bic hate crimes across Britain- placed within the wider
context of the Arab Spring,
the Syrian war and the West’s
longstanding geopolitical, cul-
tural and colonial interference
in the Middle East.
Though Moaveni explains
that her aim is to illuminate,
not to justify, it is impos-
sible not to feel that these
young women deserve our
sympathy, rather than being
condemned as outlaws and
stripped of their citizenship.
But no country wants its ISIS
citizens back – rehabilitating
them requires acknowledging
the various, and uncomfort-
able, drivers of radicalization.
Guest House is a painstaking
piece of investigative report-
ing that should be compulsory
reading for Western politi-
cians. JL
Nudibranch
by Irenosen Okojie
(Dialogue Books, ISBN 9780349700922)
littlebrown.co.uk
+++,,Guest House for Young Widows
by Azadeh Moaveni
(Scribe, ISBN 9781912854608)
scribepublications.co.uk
++++,Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird
Words: Jo Lateu and Peter WhittakerNOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2019 77