History is very important to my work in that regard and thank you for noticing. I’m no expert on Fanon, but I used the quotation as an epigraph becau… - Sefi Atta

The people who gave Ikoyi a bad name were the ones who rarely allowed other Nigerians into their social circles, except to serve and look up to them. Occasionally they were open to outsiders who had as much money and were equally materialistic. They were self-conscious but not particularly self-examining, and they were afraid to admit their vulnerability. As my protagonist Remi Lawal notes at the Dadas’ cocktail party in the novel, their lives are full of frivolous contradictions and, ultimately, they are replaced from one generation to the next. She is right about that. Ikoyi of 1976 is not the same as it is today. That society is gone now. The band and the song have changed.

It occurred to me that there was nothing more precious than satisfaction. That it was possible to end up committing a crime just because you were contaminated by a little discontent. You could convince yourself that you were satisfied, then someone could come along and say, 'But I can offer you more', and then you could begin to think, My life is not worth much after all. In fact, you could tell yourself, My life was completely worthless from the start.

I suppose the reason I write about the Lagos elite at all is that they don’t become writers. Ikoyi people in particular are underrepresented in Nigerian literature. Ikoyi itself is often described as a place where rich, powerful people live. But when I was growing up there, the people I knew were not unlike those who lived on Victoria Island, and districts on the mainland such as Apapa and Ikeja, and estates such as Alaka and Palmgrove.