Soma Nami’s Books in Review
By Wendy Njoroge
Wendy Njoroge reviews the enigmatic novel: The Incredible Dreams of Garba Dakaskus by Umar Abubakar Sidi
Reading The Incredible Dreams of Garba Dakaskus is like stepping into a shimmering, kaleidoscopic vortex, where the boundaries of storytelling dissolve into a hallucinatory odyssey. Umar Abubakar Sidi crafts a novel that defies categorization, a work so enigmatic that it loops back on itself, creating the literary equivalent of a serpent swallowing its tail. It is a book that questions the very essence of the novel, imagination, and the DNA of literature itself.
At its core, the novel follows a hunt—a quest for knowledge wrapped in the search for A Guide to the Secrets of the Alphabet and Other Matters Related to the Arrangement of Letters in the Construction of Words and Sentences. The book-within-a-book is a vessel for exploring the origins of an ancient secret, the metaphysics of creativity, and the elusiveness of truth. The reader is invited to journey across dimensions, timelines, and cities—Damascus, Sokoto, Cairo—while plunging headfirst into the mystique of Sufism and the surreal.
Sidi’s narrator complicates this labyrinthine tale further, impersonating the titular Garba Dakaskus while weaving a narrative as elusive as it is enchanting. The storytelling is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of folklore, where the reader becomes a participant in a larger dialogue. This is not a passive reading experience; it is an intellectual maze. To wander its
meanders is to risk getting lost, but for those who embrace the journey, the rewards are profound.
Author Umar Abubakar Sidi
As an added delight, the novel is littered with references to other works of literature, offering a glimpse into the books and authors that have shaped Sidi’s imagination. My suggestion? Keep a notebook at hand as you read. Each name dropped is an invitation to your next literary adventure—a breadcrumb trail leading to further discoveries.
The novel’s prose is hypnotic, inviting the reader to reconsider the linearity of time, the nature of creativity, and the construction of language itself. And yet, through all this, Garba Dakaskus remains unknowable, a spectral figure who lingers just beyond comprehension.
Who is Garba Dakaskus? This question haunted me as I turned the final page, and it continues to haunt me now. Perhaps that is Sidi’s ultimate triumph: to invite the reader not into resolution, but into a shared sense of wonder and inquiry. When you have read this spellbinding novel and formed your own theory about Garba Dakaskus, let me know. Let’s debate it, for that, too, is part of its magic.
You can find The Incredible Dreams of Garba Dakaskus by Umar Abubakar Sidi and many more titles at Nairobi’s Pan-African bookshop Soma Nami, located in Greenhouse Mall, Ngara & online at www.somanami.co.ke
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