Book Review: ‘Leave my Bones in Saskatoon,’ by Adefemi Fagite

Warsan Shire says no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark and this has been explicitly explained in Micheal Afenfia’s new novel, Leave my Bone in Saskatoon. The novel starts with a poem that reflects I guess the life of the writer in a new place called home. I have always enjoyed books that address political matters and this novel did justice to that. 

If I wasn’t an immigrant I might not be able to relate to the story but as an immigrant who has experienced some of what the main character went through, I realized I wasn’t alone in this journey.

A tale of betrayal, love, grief, and political vices. I read this book in a sitting. It was an intriguing read. I was like Micheal Afenfia has done his magic again. You could sense the tension brewing from the first chapter down to the last. Such tension that pushes you to keep flipping the pages. Such tension that makes you curse the characters you hate. 

The interesting thing about this novel is that it’s unpredictable. Micheal Afenfia is skillful at describing places and you as a reader would visualize it. The humor in this novel shouldn’t be left out. I wondered how a soft-spoken man could create such humor in his book. 

A didactic story that teaches about the pros and cons of immigration. When an immigrant tells the people back home about how depressing the cold might be or how it’s hard to survive in climatic regions, they call you a bluff or an enemy of progress and more or less the reason why immigrants would rather keep quiet and pray for you to experience it. This is what Bimpe and her husband did to Owoicho, the main character in this novel. Well, they did more ‘strong thing’ and it takes you to buy the book to discover that. This is a novel I will suggest to everyone who’s interested in culture, immigration, and settlement to read. The author tells the truth without bias.

AFT Administrator