After I read about 200 pages, I started to feel the pieces of the story starting to disengage from each other – disconnected and decentralized form the main themes. I was expecting the eerie people and events in the story to be something symbolic, a representation of Africa or our life. But there doesn’t seem to be any underlying meaning buried under the words, sentences and passages. There are ugly rivalry between corrupt political parties, their exploits to the poor ghetto-dwellers and debauched parties of the people of eerie appearances such as midget, the blind and the cripples but they do not seem to carry any symbols other than to fill up the pages to make it into a novel-sized chunk of surreal text.
My first thought is that the spirit-child would have bumpier life experiences when his companions in the World of Dead send multi-headed creatures to fetch him to them. To my disappointment, no such thing happens and there was even a major change of focus in the middle of the story. The focus of the story is shifted from Azaro to his father, who has an intense dream to be a boxer and later a politician. Through him Azaro sees the cunning world of the politics and human world but it is inadequate to form a revelation for him.
Again, I read the story to enjoy the surreal plot and metaphysical subjects such as living, dying and struggles as witnessed in the first chapters of the story. It seems the book doesn’t have a very clear grip on them and has lost all its dream-like imagery which is washed away since the middle of the book where his father becomes a central protagonist. To sum up, the book failed to carry the literary subtlety it gives birth in the beginning of the book. It would have been a good story that earns five-star from me otherwise.
