The opening book follows first-person narrator Kaaro – slob and sometimes government agent with a Chandlerian gumshoe voice – as he bumbles through a relationship with his much sharper fellow agent Aminat and survives a xenosphere shock to become its most potent navigator.

The aloof alien presence offers benign healing and spews odd new life-forms and the shared-consciousness mesh of its xenosphere facilitates communication, prescience and insanity. Rosewater, the first book of his trilogy, describes the impact of their landing in Nigeria, turning a backwater into a bustling city where their alien dome attracts pilgrims, hucksters and securocrats. “Before we judge too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought …The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of 50 years … Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?”īritish-born, Yoruba-heritage writer Tade Thompson’s invaders are the Homians who, having wrecked their own planet, have scoured the universe for a new home. In the foreword to his 1898 War of the Worlds, which told of a ruthless invasion from Mars, the English socialist HG Wells made his metaphor crystal-clear. Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Įvery tale of alien invasion or interstellar conquest is a tale about imperialism and colonisation, consciously or not.Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window).

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The rosewater redemption