Taiwo Michael Oloyede
Toni Kan’s The Carnivorous City offers a vivid portrait of Lagos as a living, breathing force—unforgiving, restless, and voracious. Lagos is not merely the backdrop of this story; it is its protagonist, shaping and consuming the lives caught within its sprawl. The city oscillates between chaos and extravagance, where minor disputes erupt into riots and fortunes evaporate in the glittering haze of champagne-fuelled nights.
Abel Dike, a teacher in a quiet regional town, is reluctantly drawn into Lagos’s orbit when he receives a cryptic text message: Soni is missing. Soni, Abel’s younger brother, has built a shadowy fortune in Lagos, though the means remain deliberately opaque. With the long school break ahead, Abel sets out to find him, leaving behind his ordered life for the unpredictability of Lagos.
What begins as a search for Soni quickly becomes an immersion into his world. Abel takes up residence in Soni’s mansion, stepping into his brother’s life, both literally and figuratively. He becomes entangled with Ada, Soni’s enigmatic wife, and Zeal, his young nephew, all while relying on Santos, Soni’s untrustworthy lieutenant, to navigate the murky waters of Lagos’s underbelly. The police offer little clarity, save for the discovery of Soni’s crashed Jaguar abandoned in a ditch. Answers elude Abel as he struggles to comprehend the forces at play.
Lagos, meanwhile, exerts its influence. Abel, initially repelled by the city’s hedonism, begins to yield to its temptations. The allure of wealth and power seeps into his consciousness, blurring the lines between his life and Soni’s. What starts as a desperate quest for resolution transforms into an existential struggle. Abel must contend not only with the mystery of his brother’s disappearance but also with the relentless pull of the city itself.
Kan portrays Lagos as an omnipresent force, shaping Abel’s descent. The city’s unrelenting demands strip him of his certainties, testing his values and eroding his identity. While Soni disappears without trace, it is Abel who bears the full weight of Lagos’s appetite, emerging as its casualty. The final reckoning is not about what happened to Soni, but about what remains of Abel.
With unflinching clarity, Toni Kan captures the paradox of Lagos: its vibrancy and brutality, its seduction and betrayal. The Carnivorous City is not just a story about one man’s loss, but a keen unravelling of a metropolis that consumes all who dare to enter.
