Oyeyemi, Helen
Entry updated 26 February 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1984- ) Nigerian-born author, in the UK from infancy, latterly in Prague; none of her works could easily be called sf, even in the understanding sense that much twenty-first century work are tales that contain sf within the unruly water margins of Fantastika as a whole. It seems clear, however, that her fabulations, with their interlacings of African and British locations and modes of telling, seem instinct with fantastika.
Oyeyemi's first novel, The Icarus Gil (2005), anticipate the chordal, diasporal flow of her work in general; its precocious protagonist, half English half Nigerian, survives internal exile in rural Nigeria, haunted by Doppelgangers and at least one Mysterious Stranger; a sense that previously untoward complexities of Perception of the world will be necessary for anything like a thriving survival permeates this and subsequent novels. The goddess (it may be) who occupies the "somewherehouse" in The Opposite House (2007) has access to a cellar portal that gives instant access, as though to different Dimensions, to Cuba and Britain; her relationship to the human protagonist of the tale is couched with some violence. The twinning in Pie-Kah (2009; vt White Is For Witching 2009) is between its protagonist, who may be dead and/or a Vampire, and a haunted house. Mr Fox (2011) is a complex metafiction (see Fabulation) whose main protagonist, having killed off characters who appear in his own novels [for Books here and Twice-Told below see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], finds himself woven into a complex of tales in which he is himself both pursued and pursuer. Though extremely complicated in its narrative tissue, Boy, Snow, Bird (2014) may best be understood as a Twice-Told rendering of the fairytale "Snow White".
Hints of the Tale of Circulation percolate through Gingerbread (2019), a skittish canter through lives the gingerbread of fairytales intersects with human lives. In Peaces (2021), a train trip is gradually transfigured into a Fantastic Voyage (see Ship of Fools). Parasol Against the Axe (2024) is set in a storyboard Prague uniquely (as in real life) available as a stage for telling; at the heart of a surreally narrated text, a novel called Paradoxical Undressing iterates a different tale each time it is read; assonances can be detected between this novel and Zoran Živković's The Papyrus Trilogy (omni 2016). Through Oyeyemi's work, a pantomime clatter is constantly at the service, and adds local colour to, a vision of life on the planet as it may best be endured. [JC]
Helen Olajumoke Oyeyemi
born Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria: 10 December 1984
works (selected)
- The Icarus Girl (London: Bloomsbury, 2005) [hb/William Webb]
- The Opposite House (London: Bloomsbury, 2007) [hb/Andy Bridge]
- Pie-Kah (London: Picador, 2009) [hb/]
- White Is For Witching (New York: Doubleday/Nan A Talese, 2009) [vt of the above: hb/]
- Mr Fox (London: Picador, 2011) [pb/]
- Boy, Snow, Bird (London: Picador, 2014) [hb/]
- Gingerbread (London: Picador, 2019) [hb/]
- Peaces (London: Faber and Faber, 2021) [hb/]
- Parasol Against the Axe (London: Faber and Faber, 2024) [hb/]
collections and stories#
- What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (London: Picador, 2016) [coll: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry