Against the Odds by Ben Igwe

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

I Catholicism's principal institutional 1 and intellectual adversary in Poland I for half a century?contended. The ' antithesis is?anticlericalism. I In this novel, Pawel Huelle , advances the case against the Cath 1 olic Church's aggrandized role in I Poland since communism's demise 1 in 1989. He does this in two ways. 1 First,by introducing characterswho 1 will be attending a photo shoot in 1 Gdansk of a postmodern version of , the last supper, he injects biblical 1 commentary questioning the story , of Jesus widely accepted today. 1 Huelle asks: Why have we settled 1 on the authority of four evange 1 lists and not others? Why do we 1 gloss over the inconsistencies and [ contradictions found in the scrip 1 tures? For good measure, the author , throws in the historical skepticism 1 that may possibly have troubled the , conscience of Scottish artist David 1 Roberts as he meandered through 1 the Holy Land in the mid-nine ' teenth century. 1 A second line of attack takes a , more concrete shape. It is centered 1 on key personages of the church , in Poland. Chief among these is 1 Father Monsignore, who acts as if he were plenipotentiary of Gdansk. A series of bombings targeting the city's liquor storesmay be thework of terrorists, but, Huelle suggests, they aremore likely to be aMafia orchestrated shakedown seeking to boost sales of a wine associated with Monsignore. Any Pole with a passing knowledge of recent his tory will easily identify thisodious, arrogant, anti-Semitic, nationalistic Monsignore as the confessor-priest toSolidarity founder Lech Walesa. The novel's twelve chosen "apostles," together with several minor characters?or are they all minor??are segues for Huelle to discuss a host of topics in addition to the scriptures: wars in Yugosla via, traffic jams in Poland's tri-city region on the Baltic sea, literary allusions to Joyce's Ulysses, among others. The spoof of Polish Catholi cism is, however, the one compel ling thread.Most of the figures in the novel are readily forgettable and, try as he might, Huelle also offers little serious philosophical inquiry in the telling of the sto ries. Moreover, even as bombs blast buildings and police cordon the city off, there is nothing apocryphal in the plot. The steady hand of the translator prevents the novel from altogether decomposing. (Editorial note: To read Huelle's story "Depka and Rzepka," see the November 2009 issue ofWLT.) Raymond Taras StanfordUniversity Ben Igwe. Against the Odds. New Rochelle, New York. African Heritage. 2009. 311 pages. $19.95. isbn 978-0 9790858-3-3 Ben Igwe's Against the Odds has joined the growing body of Afro diasporic fiction inwhich relation ships are built around characters descended from old African Ameri- = can families and new African immi- = grants, thus giving rise to exciting = new interpersonal conditions, and, = sometimes, ambivalent and prob- = lematic situations. = In this novel, Jamike Nnorom = from the southeastern Nigerian E village of Alaudo, after a brilliant = academic career at Regius State Col- = lege in rural Pennsylvania, falls in = love with and marries Linda John- = son, a college girl fromPittsburgh, = in preference to the village belle, = Chioma, chosen forhim by hiswid- = owed mother from a nearby town E in Nigeria. Predictably, all hell is = let loose. Subsequently, the crisis = is contained but not before some of E those involved have been emotion- E ally bruised. = This simple plot description E masks a tremendous wealth of = socio-cultural detail that has gone E into the making of this complex E novel. Nor does itadequately reflect E Igwe's adroit control of the narra- E tive structure and subtle exploration E of themany characters thatpeople = the novel, characters strong in their E individualities and bringing with E them enriching personal and often E idiosyncratic qualities. E For example, a major focus of E thenovel is the growth and devel- = opment of the central character. = Starting lifewith so many handi- = caps, Jamike matures into a strong, = dependable and almost exemplary = hero. He evolves from an ignorant = village boy raised by his widowed = mother under conditions of grind- = ingpoverty. Naturally, he has a lot = of catching up to do. Also, com- = ing...