“I created a world I wished to see with intimate characters I understood so well.” —ARINZE IFEAKANDU
This book “God’s Children Are Little Broken Things”, first and foremost, I didn’t want to read the book because seeing the title I felt I was going to be very sad. I just thought there were so many things going on in this title that you know… Then Bolu, who is one is one of my team members here sends me a link to “Alobam” like last year. He said I will certainly love this story and I’m like Gen Z fiction I’ve become an old man. I said no I don’t want, I want to go read old books. I read Alobam and it messed with my mind. It was intense. When I heard the book I was hoping that Alobam was in the Collection because sometimes people do that. So, that was the first time I read it. Then when the second one came out I was like maybe this was just the freak accident you know, you might want to preserve the memory of this excellent writer and so you don’t want to mess it up with other stories. Then a friend of mine said oh I read this book you have to read it too. He said when he met you you were very brave and he said you said to him “Brave”? It was like you were genuinely confused as to why he would think that you were Brave. I went to order it and I finished the first story which I want to talk about. I was just Breathless. I’m very dramatic but this is the real thing. It was too much and you know I’m gonna talk about that first story. What made me breathless was the way you ended the first story. This is the fourth official selection that we’re doing, The first one was “Swallow” the second one was “A Broken People’s Playlist” and the third one was The Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree.” So this is our fourth official selection in our book club.
The first thing I want to ask you about in this book is that there was a sense that you were not going to explain yourself, was that deliberate?
Arinze: First and foremost I was writing for mostly my own entertainment so I’m like I’m having fun here. I’m creating the world that I wish to see. I’m writing about these characters that have like inhabited my mind for quite some time and with whom I have like this sort of intimate relationship and so like there was no need to sort of explain things to anybody because I had a perfect understanding between myself and my characters. So, that was like the sense I had.
How to watch the FULL episode:
- Subscribe on watch.withchude.com to watch the full video.
- Subscribe on listen.withchude.com or Apple Premium to listen to the full podcast.
