Timothy Ogene
Photograph: Clare MacKenzie
Books
Books
Timothy Ogene was raised in the outskirts of Port Harcourt in southern Nigeria. He has since lived in Liberia, the UK and the US, where he is lecturer in African literary and cultural studies at Harvard. His first novel, THE DAY ENDS LIKE ANY DAY, was named Book of the Year by the African Literature Association.
His second novel, SEESAW, will be published by Swift Press in November 2021.
Praise for SEESAW (2021):
'A very funny, intelligent, deliberately and engagingly resistant, and moving piece of writing.' Amit Chauduri
Fiction
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
2021 Swift Press | A ‘recovering writer’ ‒ his first novel having been littered with typos and selling only fifty copies ‒ Frank Jasper is plucked from obscurity in Port Jumbo in Nigeria to attend the prestigious William Blake Program for Emerging Writers in Boston. Once there, however, it becomes painfully clear that he and the other Fellows are expected to meet certain obligations as representatives of their ‘cultures’; eventually expelled from the fellowship for ‘non-performance’ and ‘non-participation,’ Frank sets off on trip to visit his father’s college friend in Nebraska. SEESAW is an energetic comedy of cultural dislocation – and in its humour, intelligence and piety-pricking, it is a refreshing and hugely enjoyable act of literary rebellion. |