A largely allegorical exploration of the loneliness of an existence based on an alien world-view, Martin Egblewogbe's The Waiting is a collection rooted in metropolitan Ghana, but its primary territory is the human mind. Juxtaposing his training as a physicist against his curiosity about local myth, he creates a universe that's both entertaining and erudite. In A Photograph of K & S, Smiling, a completely self-obsessed man, returned home after his father's death, attempts to explain away his unremarkable life based on one perceived slight from his youth; in The Gonjon Pin (title story for the 2014 Caine Prize anthology) a genius working on a program to predict lottery numbers is stumped by the appearance of an intruder's disembodied genitals on the wall of his computer engine room; The Making, Rain and Back to the Halls explore futility in different ways, while Atta explores life after death - a theme that reoccurs in a much bleaker guise in The Crwoling Caterpillar. Often Kafkaesque in its isolation of characters and a pervading sense of powerlessness, The Waiting nevertheless maintains a constant hum of humour, nowhere more so than in The Going Down of Pastor Mintumi - in which a pastor who has discovered the pleasures of the flesh late in life overindulges with hilarious consequences. The title story, The Waiting, is judgement day in a twisted mind, filled with the kinds of questions that haunt a life on earth, which, ultimately, is the quest of all art.

About the Author
Martin Egblewogbe is a lecturer in Physics at the University of Ghana. His work has appeared in PEN America's Passages and The Scofield, and his story The Gonjon Pin was the title of the 2014 Caine Prize anthology. A resident of Accra, Martin is a co-founder of The Writers' Project and hosts a weekly radio literature show on Citi FM. The Waiting is his second book.

Reviews
Egblewogbe has created in this collection, The Waiting, one of those rare works of art that is hard to categorise, not simply for its fecund descriptions, but more so because of a stylistic originality that transcends pigeonholing. With a power of description as evocative and poignant as it is tender, Egblewogbe's subject matters range from the simple, though far from simplistic, to the almost metaphysical. He is as adept in covering the shenanigans of a pastor in The Going Down of Pastor Muntumi, with Maupassantian irony, as he is with the seemingly existential scope of a story such as The Cwroling Caterpillar. - Benjamin Kwakye



Book Information
ISBN 9780954157074
Author Martin Egblewogbe
Format Paperback
Page Count 142
Imprint Lubin & Kleyner
Publisher Flipped Eye Publishing Limited