Written as a collection of linked short stories within the novel form, Waiting for an Angel is a completely engrossing story of Nigeria in its tumultuous 1990s—danger, chaos, violence, despair...and yet, it is ultimately an amazingly uplifting book. It is certainly one of my best reads this year.

The story's link is Lomba, a promising young journalist writing for a local Lagos newspaper. In the first story we find hm in prison as a political prisoner when the warden taps Lomba to help him write love poetry to a woman he is interested in. And then, like in a dot-to-dot exercise, the author introduces us to other characters— students, neighbors, and local characters—all with some connection to Lomba, all living lives as normal as they can in the chaos and uncertainly of the rapidly changing political atmosphere of the time. The author eventually brings the story back to Lomba, of course. The format of the novel is inextricably linked to the story, both in connecting Lomba to others (making him kind of an everyman) and for illustrating the fragmentation of their world (not sure that latter bit conveys accurately what I want to say).

Through a very different story and cast of characters, this book reminds me a bit of Tahar Ben Jelloun's This Blinding Absence of Light in that it illustrates the resilience of the human spirit in the bleakest of times—a powerful message of hope. ( )