Most of the children were shoeless and you were confronted with the dilemma that, no matter how much money you had and no matter where you could esca… - Sefi Atta

She drinks her Eva water. Their parents were taken down by cancer, heart attacks and strokes. Respectable diseases.

Lastly, as you know, we have a few critics in the Nigerian literary community who are caught up in the old Igbo-Yoruba rivalry, which doesn’t interest me, but their reviews reflect that. I’m used to having different responses to my work. I don’t expect everyone to appreciate what I write and I’m thankful to readers who do.

You know, I’ve also been called a Lagos writer and a feminist writer, but I just tell stories that interest me in ways that interest me. Growing up in Ikoyi, I had friends who used drugs. Friends who discovered their fathers had girlfriends, second wives and other children. Friends whose mothers were victims of physical and emotional abuse. Friends whose parents got divorced. I never thought any of those families were dysfunctional. To me, such things were just part of family life. But I always heard about them from third parties because appearance was everything in Ikoyi, most especially the appearance of respectability.