By Osa Mbonu-Amadi
Today, October 29, 2024, while I was searching for links to my works on the internet using the Google search engine, I saw an interesting link to Nairaland, a popular interactive news website: https://www.nairaland.com/4920955/need-find-nigerian-novel.
From the Google Snippet Preview of the link, I learned that some people had been looking for my book, “Burn Again…” which was serialized on hard copies of Weekend Vanguard Newspaper, nearly 30 years ago in 1995 before Nigerian newspapers began to be published online.
After I clicked on it and followed the link to Nairaland I discovered that the link was 6 years old. A certain person with the name, SpacyZuma, had exactly at 10:18 p.m, December 23, 2018, published a request titled “I Need Help To Find This Nigerian Novel”. SpacyZuma could not remember the title of the novel or the name of the author. But he remembered very well the storyline which he wrote down graphically thus:
“Hello,
“This appeal goes to Nigerians aged 30-50.
“For years, I’ve been trying to find a Nigerian novel.
“This novel was syndicated in Sunday/Weekend Vanguard Newspaper in the early 1990s.
“By ‘syndicated’, I mean the novel was published as a serial in Sunday Vanguard over several months. I’m not sure of the year, but this was between 1992 and 1998. Sunday Vanguard and Weekend/Saturday Vanguard frequently had this practice of syndicating Nigerian novels every weekend across the middle 4 pages of the newspaper over several weeks/months.
“I read several novels through them. One of them was ‘Time Changes Yesterday’. Another such novel that I faintly remember was ‘Sunset in the Clouds’ starring a guy named Boro.
“This particular story that I’m looking for… I have no idea what the novel’s title is, but I remember quite a lot about the plot and characters.
“It was about a young dating couple called Emeka and Evelyn, both students at OAU, Ife.
“Evelyn was from a rich family. She was a born again Christian (no sex till marriage) and she loved Emeka. Her brother bought her a car for her birthday.
“Emeka was from a poor family, I think. He was a good pianist and played for their campus fellowship. He was a fuckboy, but he hid it very well from Evelyn. There was a babe called Ruth who had sex with Emeka many times and was also in their campus fellowship. Emeka wanted to stop sleeping with her but she always kept coming back for sex. One cliffhanger serial ended with a knock on his door (probably by Evelyn) while Emeka and Ruth were having sex.
“One Sunday Morning, as Emeka was preparing for church service, he got a lady visitor called Dayo who came to ‘preach’ to him. This Dayo was a friend of Ruth and knew that Emeka was a fuckboy stud. Emeka ‘seduced’ Dayo and they were having sex and got caught by Evelyn, Rachel and some others (they had suddenly visited Emeka because he was absent from church service).
“The next part I remember was when there was a riot in the school (I don’t remember what caused it) and some cultists or bad guys were going around destroying property and raping students. Evelyn was almost raped but Emeka arrived in time and saved her. He had been begging her for forgiveness.
“I don’t know how the novel ended. The last scene that I remember was soon after the riots when they were together and Emeka tried to kiss Evelyn but she remembered his cheating and pushed him away saying “You are dirty!”
“Please, if you remember this novel or know the name or the person that wrote it, please mention me or contact me via spacyzuma@yahoo.com.
“Thank you.”
One month later, Jan 03, 2019, 8:14 a.m., spacyzuma returned to Nairaland to announce that he had found answer to his questions:
“I’ve found what I’m looking for. The book is called ‘Burn Again’ Author is Osa Amadi. I just have to find and contact him now to get the book.”
The next day, January 04, 2019, at 5:08 a.m., one Kaycee9242 wrote to spacyzuma the inquirer:
“Pls brother when u get it kindly send to my email anthonyokechukwu@yahoo.com, d novel will be very interesting.
“Tanx.”
Having been inundated by phone calls, text messages, emails, and later via the social media with inquiries on where copies of the book “Burn Again…” could be bought, between August and September 2019, I began the quest to publish the novel on Amazon Kindle Books. I never knew that people were also searching for the book and the author on the internet.
Finally, on September 4, 2019, I succeeded in publishing the novel on Amazon Kindle with the title and a subtitle, “Burn Again: The last virgin on campus”.
Four years later, on March 13, 2023, 2:32 p.m., spacyzuma returned to the website to inform Kaycee9242 that he had found the book. “It’s on AMazon Kindle store: https://amzn.eu/d/OL4E718!” he declared.
This somewhat epic search for a novel serialized 30 years ago only on the hard copy of a national newspaper before Nigerian newspapers began online publishing underscores the importance of publishing one’s work online.
If I had not taken steps to publish “Burn Again…” online, there was no way spacyzuma and his friends could have been able to find the book. Today this novel is on the cloud at Amazon. And it will be there and available for a very long time.
As asserted by Anke, V. (1995) in “No Document—No History: Mary Ritter Beard and the Early History of Women’s Archives” (Journal of The American Archivist. Vol. 58, No. 1, pp. 16-30: Society of American Archivists: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40293886), history made without documentation is history waiting to be lost. In this digital era, work not published online is work waiting to be lost.
