(typewriter pinging) - Hi, I'm Stephen Buoro, and this is "The Five Sorrowful Mysteries" of Andy Africa.

(gentle music) - Tell us what the story's about and introduce Andy and I'm gonna read him in your words.

"A 15-year-old African genius poet altar boy who loves blondes."

- Yeah.

- Tell me about Andy.

- Yeah, yeah, so Andy's a 15-year-old boy, he lives in northern Nigeria with his mother.

That is where I actually grew up, I grew up in a town called Kontagora, and that is where my novel is set.

So Andy has a complicated relationship with his mother, she's poor, she's uneducated.

Well, Andy has a unique secret, Andy's secret is his obsession with blondes and with whiteness, the West, and American culture and all that.

And so, in a nutshell, the novel is how Andy juggles and his feelings of shame he feels towards his mother due to how poor and uneducated she is, and how his experiences becomes intensified and all when his life is suddenly destabilized by communal violence, by religious riots in northern Nigeria.

(gentle music continues) - [J.T.

Ellison] And this is a love story.

- [Stephen] Yeah, it's a love story.

- [J.T.

Ellison] It's a love story.

We haven't even talked about his mom.

- Yeah.

- I mean, oh my gosh.

- Yeah, so like in a way, like the novel, I see the novel as a love story in three ways.

A love story between like a mother and a son, because Andy has a very complicated relationship with his mother.

He usually loves her, but at the same time, he's hugely ashamed of her.

I mean, she's poor, she's uneducated, she's black, she mispronounces English words and all that.

And so there's so many things about her that he rejects and all.

And so, and it's also a love story between Andy and Eileen, the blonde British girl that he falls in love with.

And in a way too, I think it's a complicated love story about the relationship between Nigeria, and perhaps the Africa continent as whole, and with the West, you know, with the colonizers and all.

So it's just complications all around and all.

- You did a wonderful job.

- [Stephen] Thank you.

- Congratulations.

It's a really great book.

- Oh, thank you so much.

Yeah.

- Stephen, it's been delightful talking to you.

Thank you for being here.

- Yeah, thank you for having me.

It's been lovely talking to you too, yeah.

- And thank you for watching "A Word on Words."

I'm J.T.

Ellison, keep reading.

(bell ringing) - [Stephen] Nigerians are some of the happiest people in the world, which is very funny because of the bad things that happen or we think we are the happiest people in the world.

We truly not, we're just wearing masks to shield all the turmoil within ourselves and all.