· Helon Habila did a great job in this novel of his, giving life to a world that was still waiting for the arrival of their angel. There could be another Habila and another Lomba in this part of the world and their struggle would not be heard. And yet there will be another injustice. It is a never-ending cycle of struggle and fight for www.doorway.ruted Reading Time: 13 mins. Waiting for an Angel is a political coming-of-age story published in by first-time Nigerian novelist Helon Habila. Set five years earlier in a neighborhood of Lagos known as “Poverty Street,” Waiting for an Angel follows the desperate and dangerous days of a young man named Lomba who aspires to be a novelist despite General Sani Abacha’s brutal military dictatorship. · Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in He studied literature at the University of Jos and taught at the Federal Polytechnic Bauchi, before moving to Lagos to work as a journalist. In Lagos he wrote his first novel, Waiting for an Angel, which won the Caine Prize in /5.
in Helon Habila's novel Waiting for an Angel. By first looking at the metaphor of the military state as a prison or a puppet-text, I will show how Habila uses his writer character, Lomba, as a synecdoche for the inhabitants of the prison-state and demonstrates the agency. In his afterword, Helon Habila writes that Nigeria in the s was "a terrible time to be alive." How effective is Waiting for an Angel in painting a mood of chaos and despair? Which scenes are most pivotal in conveying such a mood? 2. Abstract. Helon Habila's Waiting for an Angel () presents a portrayal of Nigeria under the military dictatorships of the s. This chapter analyses the way this elaborately structured narrative, which can be described both as a novel and as a short story cycle, depicts Nigeria as a prison for its protagonist Lomba that can only be escaped by leaving the country.
Waiting for an Angel is a political coming-of-age story published in by first-time Nigerian novelist Helon Habila. Set five years earlier in a neighborhood of Lagos known as “Poverty Street,” Waiting for an Angel follows the desperate and dangerous days of a young man named Lomba who aspires to be a novelist despite General Sani Abacha’s brutal military dictatorship. Focusing primarily on Lomba, a journalist and frustrated novelist, who, in the opening chapter is a starving political prisoner in a Lagos jail, author Helon Habila jumps back and forth in time, introducing us in succeeding chapters to the lives of ordinary citizens of Lagos, men and women, including Lomba himself, living on Poverty Street, trying to maintain some semblance of hope in an increasingly hopeless world. The collection was published in its revised format as "Waiting for an Angel" in Without doubt did the Caine Prize and this debut novel launch Habila's international writing career. In his two more recent novels, Measuring Time and Oil on Water, he has built on his strengths both as an exquisite story teller with great poetic expressiveness, and astute observer of people and events in his home country.
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