Jowhor Ile was born in 1980 and raised in Nigeria, where he currently lives. His fiction has appeared in McSweeney's Quarterly and Litro magazine.
What was your inspiration for writing And After Many Days?
I'm not sure where the idea originated, and many things inspired me. The character Ajie was in my head for a really long time, and he wanted to say something about what happened in his home in the rainy season of 1995. There was also the image of the family in a car traveling to their home village for a break. There was an ordinariness that I wanted to capture.
The novel opens in Nigeria in 1995, on the day Paul disappears, and then unfolds primarily in the years leading up to that devastating event. What can you share about the time and the place in which the story is set, and why you chose them?
I grew up in Port Harcourt in the '90s so it is the landscape of my childhood. My feelings about that period, when I look back now, are complicated. On the one hand I had a happy time growing up there (and it remains home for me) so there is an element of nostalgia. It is also one of the darkest periods in Nigeria's history, and you could feel it then even as a young person. We were under a stifling dictatorship; by the mid-'90s there was a sense of approaching a transition to something very uncertain. There was a lot of anxiety and fear.
It wasn't much of a choice to write about that time; the voice and the time the novel was set came at the very beginning. I had moved to the U.K. to do graduate work at Southampton University, and when I finished I moved to London. This was my longest period away from home. I suppose distance from that time and from the place I was writing about gave me the right access into the novel.
Paul's younger brother, 13-year-old Ajie, is the last person in the family to see him before he goes missing. Tell us about Ajie and his role in the story. What made him an interesting character to create?
Ajie was a very fun character to write. His voice in my head was really the origin of the story. He is observant, genuinely curious, resistant, impetuous, and he possessed an inwardness I came to admire.
In the acknowledgments section you thank numerous people who read early drafts of the novel, including a friend, your "most exacting critic," who gave you "angry-red notes." As a writer, how important is it for you to be open to feedback and constructive criticism? How much influence did the input from these early readers have on the final version of the novel?
Feedback and constructive criticism are important to me. Much of my writing is intuitive and the novel grew in an organic way, so I was not always certain what way it was going. Normally I would finish a story and revise it before I let anyone see it, but with And After Many Days, after I had written about three chapters I had a feeling akin to foreboding. It was scary and exciting, as if I was going underwater and wouldn't be let up for a long time. I sent those early chapters to a friend who, in response, said something to the effect of "well, there is a story there." That was the encouragement I needed, and I took the plunge. About a year and half after, I sent the first complete draft to the same friend and a few others. Their comments were crucial and allowed me the perspective to revise subsequent drafts.
And After Many Days is your debut novel. What was your path to publication like? What are you working on now?
I have been told it was less difficult for me than it normally is. Even though I have been writing for much of my life, I knew nothing about publishing and hadn't made any serious effort to publish the short stories I had written. Half way through writing And After Many Days, I started thinking about publication and got a copy of the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook to learn how to approach agents, how to write a synopsis, those kinds of things. The rejections came in one after the other. Even though I had braced myself for the worst, the rejections still hurt. I decided then to focus on finishing the novel and making it something I would be completely happy with, something I could read many years after and still like even if it never got published. At this time I had left my job, and was probably a little depressed. It feels a little crazy now looking back, but at the time, writing this novel and finishing it was the only thing that felt meaningful to me. I also decided to polish up some of my short stories and send them to magazines and literary journals. This proved more successful. I sent a short story to McSweeney's Quarterly, and the acceptance e-mail I received from Dave Eggers is one I would not forget. It was generous, and I hadn't realized until then what that sort of validation can do for a writer.
When I finished writing the novel and felt it was ready to share I sent it to a few friends. One of them asked if he could forward it to an agent. I said yes. A week later I got an e-mail from Sarah Chalfant of the Wylie Agency asking to meet regarding possible representation. I spent some more time with the manuscript, working on different bits, taking time away from it and returning. The manuscript was then sent out to publishers, and we went with the offer made by Tim Duggan Books.
I am working on another novel now, but I can't say for sure what it is yet. My writing comes together really slowly, and at this early stage it feels like sniffing my way towards something in the dark. I don't know, I guess we'll see.
What would you like readers to take away from And After Many Days?
Hopefully the same things I take away from the books I read and like--the reading pleasure. Also, after following the characters through their journeys, I would like for readers to come out of the book feeling like they have gone through those journeys themselves. Like they have lived other lives and spent time in the same places as these characters. --Shannon McKenna Schmidt