Interview: Biyi Bandele

Nigerian author Biyi Bandele reveals to Koye Oyedeji the real life inspiration that his father provided for Burma Boy, his new novel set in the Second World War.

Keeping in following with a rich tradition of Nigerian novelists such as Ben Okri, Biyi Bandele’s narratives stir the currents of the supernatural with trademark theatrics and magical realism. This year, however Bandele put down the wand to pen the comic tale Burma Boy , a novel that tells the story of Nigerians that fought in the Second World War as part of the Burma campaign of 1944.

Bandele’s novel is inspired by his father’s participation in the war; Solomon ‘Tommy Sparkle’ Bamidele Thomas was once a proud member of the Signal Corps of the Nigeria Regiment of the Royal West African Frontier Forces in 1943. Burma Boy is dedicated to his memory.

In the novel we meet Ali Banana, a thirteen-year-old former blacksmith’s apprentice who lies about his age to join the army. He becomes the youngest member of the D-Section Brigade, a group of Chindits, an unconventional and quick strike special division whose job it is to go behind the enemy lines of the Japanese. Besieged with ambush after ambush and attack after attack the Brigade, led by the one-eared veteran Samanja Damisa, make their way to a British stronghold where from there a routine troop, a ‘floating’ exercise leads to a fatal conclusion.

This is an obvious departure from your previous work. What inspired you to make that leap?

This novel really is the novel that I have always wanted to write from day one. It should’ve been my first novel, I’m glad it wasn’t. I knew I wasn’t psychologically ready to tackle it and I only decided that it was time to write it when my mother died five years ago. My father died 22 years ago and my mother died three days after my daughter was born. After that I just felt the need to tell the story, for me it was almost as if I was telling my daughter the story of her granddad. So it is quite personal in that way.

The Hausa language, from soldiers screwing up pronouns to the savvy manner in which they curse each other, plays a huge part in the text. Would you agree with this?

It’s simply because something like six to seven in every ten soldiers in Burma were a Hausa, and if you didn’t know Hausa in Burma you found yourself having to learn it. Hausa with Yoruba is my first language. I was born in northern Nigeria so I came into consciousness speaking Hausa, Yoruba, English and Pidgin.

What language were you thinking in when you wrote Burma Boy?

All four, I think, speak and even dream in all four. At home growing up we would just switch. In one sentence we would say things in four different languages.

There is an interesting part in the novel where a Japanese soldier begins to speak in Hausa in an attempt to persuade the Nigerians to desert their post, that they should leave the British to fight their own war. Is that a coded message? An author’s sentiment?

No not at all. It’s because that sort of thing would frequently happen in Burma. It actually happened! There were a large number of Japanese soldiers trained in Hausa at The School of Oriental & African Studies. I was just recreating something that happened during the war.

It’s very technical in parts, for instance, when the soldiers are loading weapons. Why did you feel the need to include these details?

The way I write I had to get to know my characters pretty well, and I thought it was important to show the day to day stuff that happens. Also, by the time I finished writing the book I was somewhat an expert on all sorts of military equipment. I think I learnt more than what I ever wanted to know.

You’ve previously adapted past work for the Stage, will you do the same for this?

I don’t know, it’s possible to adapt anything. I really want to get on with the next offer, but I may contradict myself in the future. My new novel is set the 18th century and the present. Writing Burma Boy had been difficult. My partner, the mother of my daughter, had told me the day after I finished writing the book that she just realised that during the 18 months or so that I’d been working on it I was a totally different person. That she just knew there was a lot of tension and wasn’t sure why, but that once I finished writing it, I just simply changed.