Dreadlocks and the Seven Monsters

Emeka Aniagolu's Dreadlocks & The Seven Monsters is a powerful allegorical satire. It employs three important streams of consciousness as building blocks: colonial history, contemporary geopolitics as well as political economy. It ingeniously garnishes its rich tale with a generous helping of science fiction, a literary genre virtually no past or present continental African novelist has ventured into. By so doing, Aniagolu succeeds in telling a story that enjoys historical specificity, and at the same time, has universal literary appeal as well as didactic value. In this wonderful story, monsters interact, intercourse and clash with humans; complimentary as well as contradictory moral forces collide between and within the sparse, though evocative characters that populate the novel: The Seven Monsters are evil, yet, from them comes forth the redeeming spirit-the angel of mercy, for the fabled continent of Equator. The continent of Equator is clearly the protagonist of the novel, yet manages to let loose destructive forces upon itself that almost saw to its ruin. The literary beauty and power, moral fortitude as well as masterful uncertainty of this novel gives it not only its unique appeal but makes it a treasured addition to Emeka Aniagolu's steadily growing corpus of literary gems.