[The Conversation Africa] Chigozie Obioma is the Nigerian author of the novels The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019), both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for their unique, folkloric tales of Nigerian life in decades past. Like them, his 2024 novel The Road to the Country is "tinged with fable and prophecy". It's set in the brutal Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1960, fought between Nigeria and the Republic of Biafra, a secessionist state which had declared its independence. This epic story of "a young man seeking