Blackass

Plot summary

The novel concerns Furo Wariboko, a Nigerian man, who wakes up one day to discover that he has become white.

Reception

Reviewing Blackass in The Financial Times, Jon Day wrote: "From the first sentence, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis confronts you with the inherent strangeness of the pact you make when you read fiction. Gregor Samsa has become an insect, Kafka says. Suspend your disbelief. Take it or leave it. A Igoni Barrett’s first novel — his third book — demands a similar response....to read him only as a Nigerian writer would be to do him a disservice. For Blackass is a strange, compelling novel, and Barrett has something to tell us all." Writing in The Guardian, Helon Habila said: "Igoni Barrett’s greatest asset is his ability to satirise the ridiculous extents people, especially Lagosians, go to in order to appear important." Claire Fallon for the Huffington Post concluded: "Blackass is a blunt, transparently written novel — the kind that makes the reader feel as though they’re standing inside the skin of the character, going about his day with him — and though the topic could easily be that of a polemic, it’s also a subtle, circumspect novel about the intersecting, sometimes mutually exclusive needs humans have for family and connection, and for status and power." Aaron Bady of Okayafrica calls it "the most unapologetically Nigerian book that American publishers have published in a long time, and as the 'Afropolitan' has become an increasingly omnipresent strand of contemporary African literature, there has been a steady backlash, both against the Afropolitan as such, and against the entire category of African immigrant literature.

The novel was longlisted for the inaugural FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Awards as well as the 2017 PEN Open Book Award, and was shortlisted for the 2015 Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award.