The Crippled Dancer

This is an Igbo novel in English, set somewhere near Aba apparently in the 1940s and fifties. It is a story about inter-family village quarrels, the struggle for power among adults and the lamentation of the elders about the changed youth of the day and the destruction of a glorious past by the ways of the white man.

Specifically it is a story of the struggle of one family to ensure the continuation of their line in the village. The object of this struggle is Ajuzia, whose mother died during his birth, and whose only-surviving-child father died during his youth. He is brought up by his grand parents, who impress on him the need to carry on the family struggles and war with other villagers early in his youth.
He could not reconcile himself with the young wife his grandfather married for him. But he takes on the family struggle personally after he and his grandfather were locked up for four days following a fight with Radio, a notorious son of the village, for having an affair with his grandfather’s wife. When Radio was killed by a speeding car, his grandfather was accused of using witchcraft to cause the death. The elders found the grandfather not guilty.

For a change something good happened—the grandfather rose to the position of senior elder in the village. But then their ancestry was challenged by Chief Orji. Ajuzia had to involve the father of his girlfriend at Aba who happened to be a police boss in winning this last fight, and in having the family’s prime enemy in the village locked up. So that war with the village enemies seemed won. But Ajuzia’s girlfriend was now pregnant. This was something his grand parents would rejoice for, but he first had to break the news to her violent father.

August 19, 2015. Review initially written in 1993. Novel first published in 1986. Picture source: Google Images.