419 by Will Ferguson

Not my picture

I just finished reading 419 by Will Ferguson. It recently won the 2012 Scotia Bank Giller Prize. The annual award, named after the late Doris Giller, recognizes excellence in Canadian fiction with a $50,000 grand prize.

The story is based on the internet scams running out of Nigeria. They're called 419 scams which refers to "the section in the Nigerian Criminal Code that deals with obtaining money or goods under false pretenses". Basically, fraud.

In this book it's internet fraud committed by one Winston Balogun of Lagos over his unwitting victim, an elderly gentleman named Henry Curtis. Mr. Curtis is a retired school teacher from "a cold northern town". He's a family man with a loving wife, a son and daughter and grandchildren. This scam leaves him penniless and unbearably shamed. A shame so painful that he tragically takes his own life because of it.

After Mr. Curtis' untimely death his daughter, Laura, takes up the investigation (after the local police close their file on him). It leads her on a journey to the underbelly of a far away land where she meets some truly menacing degenerates and unwittingly finds herself well in over her head.

Will Ferguson takes us back and forth through time introducing a cast of seemingly unrelated characters along the way. Along with Laura and Winston, there's Amina, a pregnant young girl from northern Nigeria, Oga (boss) Ironsi-Egobia from Lagos, Nnamdi from a small, unnamed village in the Niger Delta, the Shell Man an oyibos from the Netherlands and Igbo Joe from Port Harcourt (also in the Niger Delta).

Like a spiderweb where all the threads meet in the middle their lives will eventually intersect; and that's where they story comes to a head.

This book isn't only about the 419 scams, but life in Nigeria amongst the natives, how they interact with one another and with the oyibos (white men) in the oil industry. It is a poisoned relationship to say the least.

The ending is gripping. I'll leave it at that. Laura's intense desire for retribution leaves her blind to the peril that's closing in from all sides.