They ate from a private stash of food cooked separately in the kitchen. The most senior officers on the base flanked the colonel. Chike’s commanding officer was a stocky box of a man, his bulk filling the head of his table. Officers and lower ranks sauntered into the building in an assortment of mufti: woolen bobble hats and black T-shirts, wrappers knotted over the arm or tied around the waist, the slovenly slap of slippers flip-flopping their way inside.Ĭolonel Benatari sat by the door, watching the soldiers file past.

He had grown quite fond of the canteen he was making his way to now, a low, squat building with thick plastic sheets tacked to the windows, the walls crumbling with damp. He would spot the garganeys and ruffs gliding through the sky, their long migration from Europe almost over. Later, he would note the birds perched on the loops of barbed wire wheeling around the base. Out of this desolation had risen the grey walls of his new home. They came to a clearing of burned soil with charred stumps still rooted in it. His first sight of the base had been on an evening like this, bumping through miles of bush, leaves pushing through the open window, insects flying up his nostrils and down the dark passages of his ears. It was Chike Ameobi’s twelfth month as an officer in Bayelsa, twelve months on the barren army base. Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950942ĮVENING SWEPT THROUGH THE Delta: half an hour of mauve before the sky bruised to black. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.įirst published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Faber & Faberįirst published in the United States in 2018 by Catapult ()Ĭatapult titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West

Chibundu onuzo welcome to lagos