Helon Habila's Measuring Time

I just had the great pleasure of reading Helon Habila's Measuring Time.  Set in post-independent Nigeria, the novel traces the life of a sensitive twin brother as he comes of age.

Habila approaches his subject with a realistic yet generous and positive tone.  The protagonist and his friends and family struggle with corruption on many levels.  Political campaigns are shallow personality contests.  Politicians are leeches.  An effective school is shut down to make a political point, and the children have no place else to go.

But Measuring Time features a protagonist who learns from his brother to stand for something, and many other people in the book live that way, too.  This sort of life brings vulnerability, pain, often suffering; but it is the only way to live.  As his uncle, who is in his seventies, puts it to him when he persists in trying to find a way to re-open the school: "This is life.  There's nothing more.  The trick is never to give up."

Measuring Time is a thoroughly African book.  So much of what Americans read or watch about Africa has little to tell us about Africans.  A few white people appear in the book, but they are neither saints nor sinners.  Most important still, they are very much in the background.  For those of us raised on Tarzan and his legion of successors, from Peter Beard's the End of the Game to Meryl Streep's Out of Africa, understanding Nigeria or the rest of the continent requires a healthy dose of books like this one.