Throughout "Foreign Gods, Inc.," Ike's hard-won urban Americanness, the kind that allowed him to drive a New York taxi, slowly evaporates. It is replaced by a more primal, physical life, as he becomes more attuned to sounds and smells, especially to the stinks of suffering, failure and fear.
Mr. Ndibe invests his story with enough dark comedy to make Ngene an odoriferous presence in his own right, and certainly not the kind of polite exotic rarity that art collectors are used to. At one point, the novel compares him to the demonic Baal, and Ngene shows many signs of wishing to live up to that reputation. In Mr. Ndibe's agile hands, he's both a source of satire and an embodiment of pure terror.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/books/foreign-gods-inc-by-okey-ndibe.html?hpw&rref=books&_r=1&
Great review. I have read an advance copy. Impressive!
- Ikhide
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