BOOK REVIEW: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives,
Baba Segi decides to get another wife, a fourth one but it also means that the secret they have been hiding all these years is once again at risk of discovery. PHOTO| COURTESY
What you need to know:
- Baba Segi is a manly man’s man, an African patriarch with the huge compound and numerous children to boot.
- Baba Segi decides to get another wife, a fourth one, this time a university graduate to show off, and the wives sigh a collective sigh of exhaustion because this means that they’ll get even less attention than they had been getting from their husband.
Lola Shoneyin is one of those prolific authors who has only blessed us, as yet, with one book – much like Uganda’s Doreen Baingana with Tropical Fish.
But sometimes one book is all it takes. Baba Segi is a manly man’s man, an African patriarch with the huge compound and numerous children to boot.
His three wives are quarrelsome and view each other as competition. Baba Segi decides to get another wife, a fourth one, this time a university graduate to show off, and the wives sigh a collective sigh of exhaustion because this means that they’ll get even less attention than they had been getting from their husband.
But it also means that the secret they have been hiding all these years is once again at risk of discovery. Shoneyin is humorous and forthright in her depiction of Nigerian village life in this page turner. Get it at the Bookstop at Yaya Centre, The Magunga Bookstore, and Prestige Bookstore.
