Taiwo Michael Oloyede
Olukorede Yishau’s After the End is a searing extrapolation of the conundrums of human existence, where the intimate struggles of its characters mirror the unrelenting chaos of the cities they inhabit. From the sprawling bustle of Lagos to the foggy alienation of Liverpool and London, the novel reveals how geography shapes and intensifies the private battles of individuals navigating grief, betrayal, and the quest for redemption. The trauma of Yishau’s characters is not isolated; it is a reflection of the restless, contradictory spaces they call home, spaces where personal pain is magnified against a backdrop of societal disarray.
The story begins with a stark fracture: Idera’s husband, Demola—nicknamed “Google” for his omniscient persona—dies suddenly, leaving behind a trail of buried truths. At the heart of this trail is Lydia, who arrives at Idera’s doorstep with a young boy, Demola’s son. What unfolds is not just a tale of personal betrayal, but a complex dissection of how deception, love, and grief collide within the fragile frameworks of family. Yishau’s Lagos is not merely a setting but a character in its own right—an ever-pulsing, chaotic presence that echoes the turbulence in Idera’s life. The city, teeming with life yet rife with systemic dysfunction, becomes an apt metaphor for Demola himself: outwardly confident, inwardly fractured.
Yishau’s exploration of Idera’s trauma is hauntingly universal. Her journey from disbelief to confrontation, and ultimately to a fragile acceptance, is marked by layers of emotional complexity. It is not merely the infidelity that shatters her but the sheer magnitude of the deception—the knowledge that the man she built her life with lived in shadows, a double existence that unravels posthumously. This revelation finds its echo in Lagos, a city where facades often conceal profound decay, where appearances belie the stark truths lurking underneath. As Idera grapples with her pain, the city offers no reprieve; instead, it amplifies her isolation, its bustling streets and overcrowded spaces underscoring her sense of displacement.
Lagos gives way to Liverpool and London, two cities that serve as cold, unrelenting witnesses to Lydia’s narrative. Where Lagos hums with chaotic vitality, these cities are marked by a kind of sterile indifference. Lydia’s life in London, while superficially structured, is riddled with its own emptiness—a life lived in the shadow of Demola’s absence and the lies that tethered them. In these cities, Yishau captures a different kind of alienation, one marked by cultural dissonance and the quiet erosion of identity. Lydia, despite her revelations, is given less narrative space than Idera, and this omission mirrors her emotional position: a woman left with the remnants of someone else’s choices, navigating a world that has little space for her pain.
Idera’s relationship with Suliat, a friend defined by her own struggles as a single mother, becomes a critical anchor. Suliat’s Lagos is one of resilience, a city where survival necessitates humor and audacity. Her friendship with Idera injects warmth and vitality into the narrative, a reminder that even amidst devastation, there is room for solidarity and shared strength. Yet Suliat’s own life is marked by abandonment and betrayal, a quieter trauma that resonates in the background. Together, the women embody the duality of Lagos itself—a place of pain but also potential, where new beginnings, however fraught, remain possible.
Demola’s character is a masterful study in contradiction. As “Google,” he represents knowledge and authority, yet his life is marked by uncertainty and cowardice. His infidelity and deception are not merely personal failings but part of a broader generational cycle of betrayal. Yishau draws poignant parallels between Demola and his father, whose abandonment left indelible scars. This legacy of dysfunction is not unique to Demola but reflects a larger societal malaise, one mirrored in cities like Lagos, where systemic corruption and instability breed cycles of despair. The personal becomes political, as Demola’s choices ripple outward, affecting not just his immediate family but the broader community, symbolized by the tragic stabbing of his son by a boy from a broken home.
Yishau’s prose is vivid and evocative, rendering his cities with a painterly precision that heightens their emotional resonance. Lagos is alive with the smells of street food, the cacophony of traffic, the relentless press of humanity. Liverpool and London, by contrast, are drawn in cooler tones, their streets imbued with a quiet loneliness that mirrors Lydia’s displacement. Ile-Ife, where Idera seeks solace, offers a fleeting sense of calm, but even here, the shadows of the past linger. These cities are not mere backdrops, but active participants in the characters’ lives, shaping their experiences and refracting their trauma through their distinct atmospheres.
In After the End, Yishau achieves something remarkable: a story that feels both intensely personal and expansively universal. The pain of his characters is rendered with exquisite empathy, their struggles resonating against the larger canvas of their environments. The novel reminds us that cities, like the people who inhabit them, are full of contradictions—places of possibility and limitation, resilience and despair. Ultimately, it is this interplay between the individual and the urban that gives After the End its profound emotional power, rehashing the indomitable human spirit in the face of unyielding landscapes.
