"Trying to maintain some semblance of hope in an increasingly hopeless world"

“Waiting for an Angel” was an interesting book. It was kind of confusing, the way it jumped around to different times in Lomba’s life. In some ways, I enjoyed that narrative style, but it was also disheartening because I knew that Lomba was ultimately going to end up in prison, despite all the good things he was trying to accomplish. The novel jumps from one awful story to the next. There is not really a time in the novel where nothing major is happening. This symbolizes the frantic and hopeless way life was for ordinary people and allows the reader to imagine living during this time.


While the characters in the novel were fictional, many of the events that took place actually happened. This made me wonder if perhaps author Helon Habila was present for any of these events, since he once held the very same job as Lomba. And when Lomba attends a party of poets and authors, a man introduces himself as ‘Helon Habila.’ At that moment, I wondered if this novel was more autobiographical than we were originally led to believe.



"Every oppressor knows that wherever one word is joined to another word to form a sentence, there'll be revolt. That is our work, the media: to refuse to be silenced, to encourage legitimate criticism wherever we find it." This touching passage from the novel made me realize how much we Americans take democracy for granted. The media can do and say almost anything they want to in America without endangering their lives. This was not the case in Nigeria. The courageous young people who hoped to bring democracy to Africa through their words were constantly at risk of being beaten, jailed, or even killed, simply for speaking their mind. It made me realize just how courageous people like Lomba were, and even non-fictional people, like Habila himself.

"There was nothing to believe in: the only mission the military rulers had was systematically to loot the national treasury; their only morality was a vicious survivalist agenda in which any hint of disloyalty was ruthlessly crushed."