Modern Nigeria, the love story

The middle section, “Some Years Later,” is set from 1970 to early 1994, when the optimism of post-colonial Nigeria is met with disappointment at the failures to fulfill that early promise.

The concluding section, “And Then,” covers the period between 1994 and 1998, a time of transition and cautious hope for the future. The novel juxtaposes this history with the personal stories of the lives of Tayo and Vanessa. Indeed, the reader experiences history through these two lovers’ stories.

The novelist Philip Roth once wrote, “The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides.” Literature has the power to articulate what it means to be inside history, revealing for readers what it is like to be part of a historical moment.

This is the laudable achievement of Manyika’s novel. Readers gain deeper insights into Nigerian history, from the Biafran War to the military coups of the 1970s and early 1990s and the cautious optimism of the return of democracy in the late 1990s, through the experience of Tayo.

Formally, In Dependence employs the third person voice to tell its story.

This gives the narrative an objective quality, leaving readers the opportunity to make up their own minds about the characters as opposed to the author passing judgment for them. But the characters come alive and their identity is more acutely defined through the letters they write. The letters contain some of the most visceral writing of the novel.

They are personal and reveal characters to readers in ways that the third-person narrative doesn’t.

The correspondence between Tayo and his father, for example, or the exchanges between Tayo and Vanessa, have an openness about them that are not easily available in the larger narrative.

With this technique, Manyika is able to convey the true hearts of the main characters.

As a result, an intimacy between the reader and characters develops that in turn fashions a deeper empathy for the people in the novel.

In Dependence’s quiet power resides in the way it captures what it means for two people to be connected by love.

But what makes the novel even more compelling is how Manyika is able to reveal the tragedy of what history can do to those who have to endure it.