Author of “Some White English Women I’ve Almost Known” Considers Comparisons

Nov. 10, 2009 - PRLog -- How is the author dealing with the roaring success of his collection of stories?

When asked this question in an interview which takes place at the Potter’s Shed – a cosy café/bar in Munich’s trendy Schwabing district – the British/Nigerian author Mogbolahan Koya-Oyagbola breaks into childlike laughter. “Thank you for saying so,” he finally manages, “but I’d hardly call it a roaring success. The trouble is… or rather I have the challenge of living in Munich but marketing the book to a U.S. audience. The internet levels the playing field of course but I don’t have the marketing budget of the major publishers or the marketing appeal of big name authors,” he concludes with good humour. As if reading the interviewer’s thoughts he adds, “No I’m not worried. The book is selling at a slow but steady pace. With all the books out there it will take time for my book's audience to discover it but discover it they will. In three months everyone will be talking about this book. You might even be reading contributions from me in the New Yorker and watching me on Oprah.” The childlike laughter returns.

Of the collection – Some White English Women I’ve Almost Known (248 pp., tpb $13.99 USD) – Sefi Atta, award winning author of Everything Good Will Come, concludes that, “Koya-Oyagbola cuts through the under-explored territory of middle class Nigerians in this audacious, globetrotting debut about straying fathers and aimless sons.” The interviewer concurs and is reminded of the 2000 Fiction Pulitzer Prize winning collection, Interpreter of Maladies by writer Jhumpa Lahiri. Segun Afolabi’s, A Life Elsewhere also comes to mind. A momentary cloud darkens Koya-Oyagbola’s brow at these comparisons.

“You know,” he purrs in his deep, low voice, “I’m always wary of comparisons. As a child and a teenager at school in England I got fed up to the teeth with being compared to others. It was always about my hairstyle. One day I would look like Eddie Murphy, the next like Ellery Hanley and all according to the hair. A visit to the barber was full of identity switching possibilities.” Some more mind reading takes place and Koya-Oyagbola says, “Ellery Hanley was a rugby league player for Wigan.”

A sip of water and a chuckle later he continues, “Just so long as the person was black I looked like them. I was and am perfectly happy looking like me. You see I look a lot like my mother and I love my mother very much. If you really want to impress me, tell me how much like my mother I look. With comparisons in writing content and style my fear is that people will think I am simply playing copycat. Of course nothing comes from a vacuum and we all draw inspiration from others but truth be told, I read both writers (the collections you mentioned) after completing my stories. And I read them at the insistence of friends who kept telling me I wrote like them. After reading my story ‘Double Helix’ two friends told me it reminded them of Segun Afolabi’s writing. This was both compliment and potential death knell as he had just won the Caine Africa prize at the time. I was fearful of being labelled a copycat. And then of course I went through a period of being rejected by publishers because my work was deemed not original, which is publisher speak for ‘we don’t know how to market you’. I suppose in my story ‘Mr Isaiah’ there is something of the Lahiri narrative arc but my stories tend to be grittier, with surrealistic twists which neither writer’s works possess. The title of my collection alone hints at cheap and tawdry improprieties. This aspect is only one of many however in the subtly layered narrative fabric. Comparisons can be fraught with danger but Jhumpa Lahiri, Segun Afolabi… I love their short stories so you go right ahead and compare my work with theirs.”

Mogbolahan Koya-Oyagbola works as a freelance Business English language teacher in Munich. He graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy from University College London and an M.A. in Modernism and Modern Writing from Royal Holloway University of London. In addition to keeping a blog, he is currently marketing this collection, editing a screenplay about expatriate life in Japan and learning German in readiness to enrol as a PhD candidate on a Linguistics degree course at a German university. To order copies of his book, read his blog or take a look at his youtube channel, go to his website at www.mogbolahankoya-oyagbola.com/.

ISBN: 1449507298
EAN-13: 9781449507299

Mogbolahan Koya-Oyagbola
Author – Some White English Women I’ve Almost Known

publicity@mogbolahankoya-oyagbola.com

Munich, Germany

URL: www.mogbolahankoya-oyagbola.com/
To interview, contact author at publicity@mogbolahankoya-oyagbola.com

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Mogbolahan Koya-Oyagbola - author of, Some White English Women I've Almost Known - was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1970.