The Fact of Suffering

The Fact of Suffering opens with John Sellig's drive to the airport in Abuja that includes encounters with the Nigerian scourge - roadblocks, and, unfortunately, an impaling scene. In this chapter, we start to see he's a bigger-than-life character who tries to make things right, but ultimately fails when he lets his all-about-me side take precedence.

It's rough going from "Chapter One" on - a death from dehydration, a beheading, two murders, a hyena mauling - which isn't to say there aren't some lovely moments and quintessentially Nigerian vignettes, there are, but the reader always wonders with Sellig at the wheel, right up to his abandoning the school for the embassy, how the hell is this story going to tie up? It ties up with the protagonist, Sellig, being unredeemed and leaving Lowell Mellon and the rest of the cast at Ajimola Academy in his wake.