Before the Mango Ripens, Afabwaje Kurian's debut novel, follows the complex human dramas unfolding between white missionaries and the residents of a small town in Nigeria in the 1970s. It's a layered story full of interpersonal tensions that mirror deeper political conflicts as Nigeria tips toward self-rule.
Jummai is a beautiful young woman whose life is diverted by pregnancy. Tebeya is a competent doctor who has come home to her small town in the hope of taking the lead in the mission clinic, but she meets resistance from the white doctor running it. Zanya wants more agency in the mission church, run by a white reverend uninterested in sharing power. In one of the novel's central conflicts, Zanya is tasked with managing a group of laborers and fellow locals as they build the mission a new church. But when a dispute grows over their low pay, he becomes caught between them and the reverend who controls his future prospects. It's a gripping struggle made deeper by Zanya's own flaws: he's lying about miraculously surviving being set on fire, preaching his own story in an attempt to ascend to the position of pastor.
Before the Mango Ripens presents characters who are complex and multidimensional as they struggle with the colonial institutions of power standing between them and autonomy. Kurian writes gorgeous details that enliven the setting as well: "He began to see how the tree boughs, verdant and tangled, arching silhouettes on the walls of the houses and huts, could become chilling, stark limbs in the moonlight." This is a sharply insightful and elegantly written debut. --Carol Caley, writer