Click to view full size

Thir­ty-five years af­ter the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, au­thor Otan­cia Noel has chan­nelled her mem­o­ries and imag­i­na­tion in­to Town on Fire, a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries root­ed in one of the coun­try’s most trau­mat­ic events.

Un­like many pre­vi­ous works in­spired by the 1990 in­sur­rec­tion—such as Monique Rof­fey’s House of Ash­es and Louis Lee Sing’s mem­oir—Noel’s fic­tion stands apart for its deeply per­son­al con­nec­tion. She grew up on the Mu­cu­rapo Road com­pound where the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen mosque is lo­cat­ed, and al­though she was not phys­i­cal­ly present dur­ing the coup, the ex­pe­ri­ence left a last­ing im­pact.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view at Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er this week, Noel ex­plained that her up­bring­ing on the com­pound gave her a unique per­spec­tive.