Indomitable Zeal Makes Star Shine

Title of book: The Invincible Will
Author: Amadi Ekwutosilam Njoku
Publisher: AA-Peters Expressions, Nigeria
Year published: 2021
Pages: 128
Reviewer: Adjekpagbon Blessed Mudiaga

The Invincible Will, is the winner of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) prose prize of Children Literature in 2022. The author, Amadi Ekwutosilam Njoku, paints a serenading picture of different types and characters of students from diverse backgrounds and upbringings in the novella.

In its various short and long total of twenty chapters that culminates in 128 pages, the author entertains the reader with many events that shape the lifestyle of both urban and rural students from primary to secondary school level on one hand, and the childhood dreams they desire to fulfill in physical realities on the other.

The settings of the story are Amasiri village in Ebonyi State, in South – Eastern region, and Sasa community in Lagos State, South – Western, Nigeria. Through the central character’s ambition to become a successful sprinter in athletics, the author weaves a very engaging story that elicits the importance of holding firm to one’s ambition in life, while striving to get it fulfilled even if the entire world writes you off as a mere dreamer, due to your body size – whether short, tall, fat or slim.

Despite Achebe’s diminutive height like a Lilliputian, and the discouraging remarks by some folks, concerning his ambition to become an acclaimed sprinter through participation in athletic events, he remains resolute in his iron will to succeed, even when some dream killers think he is building a castle in the air.

In his resolve to put his name on the shelf of Sprint’s Galaxy, he did not just hang his hope on only praying or wishful thinking. Hence, his invincible will to succeed, lands him in El Dorado at last. He wins multiple medals through inter-secondary school relays organized by the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Sports.

In light of the issues raised in the novel, there are many lessons one could learn. Whether as a student, parent, or educational psychologist, different portions of the storyline are laced with various relatable life occurrences that one can identify with, concerning the character and behaviour of students at school and home. For instance, Lotanna, one of Achebe’s classmates belongs to the category of students that are over-pampered by their parents, which makes them become spoilt and arrogant at school. Ugonna, Lawal, and Dapo are symbols of good friends and well-wishers within and outside school environments. Kelvin is an incurable bully from God knows where. And Segun represents humble senior students who assist junior ones to succeed in their commendable ambition. Therefore, the characters in the novella are well differentiated in their individual traits.
By and large, the diction of the author is quite entertaining with very rich figurative expressions, idioms, and some commonly used Nigerian – style pidgin or street language jingoism. These make the reader laugh or smile from time to time, as the atmosphere and reasoning pattern of both junior and senior students are beamed on.
Apart from being a very good material for both junior and senior students, it is also important for adults, especially parents to read it too.

However, there is a saying that “No work of art is perfect.” Hence, though some defects noticed in the text may not be the author’s fault, there is a need to correct them during reprint. One of the errors includes graphic noise on pages 14 and 16, which contains the same paragraph, probably caused during the laying of the text on the CorelDRAW page maker file by the graphic artist given that responsibility in the process of text arrangement on a computer screen before printing.

There is also semantic noise on page 24 caused by the omission of two alphabets “li” from the word “living” in the first paragraph of that page. The paragraph starts with “Ving,” as a word, which makes the sentence and sweet flow of the story temporarily disjointed at that point. It is an indication of another blunder by the page graphic artist, who haphazardly copied it from God knows where in Chapter Four and dumped it like that. The graphics stylistics whereby the first two, three, or four words at the beginning of every chapter”s sentence are written in capital letters is not ideal for any type of book publication. The law of sentence uniformity does not encourage such blatant configuration by any graphic artist capitalization of a group of two, three, or four words at the beginning of any chapter or paragraph. Every sentence must begin with a capital letter, not a group of two, three, or four words as noticed at the beginning of each chapter of the novella. It is a sign of sheer ignorance on the part of the graphics arranger in formatting text.
Nonetheless, the beauty of the printing is that the book contains no mechanical or channel noise, which makes reading it quite clear and entertaining despite the psychological noise created by the graphics artist or text arranger in page planning and formatting.

The author’s other works include “Eras Literature – in – English (Critical Analysis) for Secondary Schools” and “Echoes of Our Voices (Collection of poems).” He is a member of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Lagos Chapter.

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