Review: Foreign Gods Inc.

Ike (pronounced ee-kay), the protagonist of Okey Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc., is a Nigerian cab driver in New York City with a degree from Amherst who hates the way everyone notices his accent. He's borrowed a fortune to buy an airline ticket back to Nigeria and his remote home village, where he'll steal the wooden god Ngene, then make his fortune selling it to a Manhattan gallery that specializes in exotic deities.

Going back to Utonki will bring him face-to-face with his aging, fragile mother, who hasn't received any support from her son since he became addicted to gambling, as well as his uncle, Ngene's chief priest, whose commitment to the god is utterly sincere, and Pastor Godson Uka, a Christian preacher who's been convincing villagers to fear each other's evil magic while he drains them financially for protection. Pastor Uka's shameless manipulation of Ike's mother, his primary convert, rubs Ike the wrong way. Then Ike gets a visit from his first love, now a frumpy battered woman with five kids, her wealthy deceased husband having been fleeced by the greedy pastor.

Along with the Reverend Walter Stanton, a hot-tempered Anglican missionary who dares to challenge Ngene, Ndibe provides several other nicely rounded secondary characters, especially Bernita, Ike's sexual tornado of an ex-wife, and Ike's former classmate "Tony Curtis," now a fabulously wealthy politician with two houses and a six-car garage. Still, it's Ike's show all the way as his soul is battled over by two gods, two priests and his mother.

Ndibe writes with a folksy inclusiveness, inviting characters in to stay a little longer than they're needed, allowing for colorful banter among villagers who have an altogether different sense of time. The village humor, the greetings and teasing, lend the Utonki sequences a lyrical magic, interrupted by the ubiquitous ringing of cell phones.

Just as Ndibe's ear is attuned to the musical rhythms of Nigerian dialogue, the novel itself accommodates "his people's knack for... meandering, circumlocutory, proverb-laced talk." Into this richly stocked brew of characters, Ndibe skilfully introduces some genuine suspense in the final stretch, guiding readers through the nail-biting tension of getting through customs Nigerian-style. As an author with a foot in Nigeria and the U.S., he expertly brings both worlds to life before they collide. --Nick DiMartino

Shelf Talker: A taxi driver in New York City decides to steal the wooden god from his remote Nigerian village and sell it to a gallery specializing in exotic deities.

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