In primary school in south-eastern Nigeria, I was taught that Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. I learned the same thing in secondary school. In university, Mubarak was still president of Egypt. I came to assume, subconsciously, that he - and others like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - would never leave.

If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case; so it's important to engage with the other Africa.

And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.

The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?

We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present.

Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.

I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is obvious to everyone else.