What to read after The Legends of King Odum?

The Legends of King Odum Synopsis

      Set during the reign of the Benin Empire, Akaso, the primary literature from The Legends of King Odum, is the story told from the natives a century before Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and after, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. King Odum, is an actual figure from the late 1700s. As a young prince in the Niger Delta, during the European exploration of the Guinea coast, Odum sets out on a journey to find an Ingiminji (Mermaid), a local cult figure, only to discover she has been seized by a mutinous group aboard an infamous vessel of the East India Company, The Hartwell (1787). The challenges of Prieta, the mermaid, lead to a grand alliance within the Empire.

         To summon the reader to better understand the culture of this novel, “Two Gods,” allows the two greatest ideas of the East and West to coalesce and ascertain the better concept. Through the guise of this cult, we discover two tales, which helped to shape the imagination and moral values of Prince Odum in, “Abayomi,” and “The Merchant’s Children.”

          Finally, in an act of war against Elem Kalabari, a region responsible for the sale of over 4 million enslaved persons out of Guinea, Odum is forced to relinquish his throne, in order to save his own kingdom from enslavement by neighboring tribes. King Odum, is a fallen medieval figure of precolonial West Africa researched by GI Jones, Trading States of The Oil Rivers (1963) & Kenneth Dike’s Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta (1956). The cross-cultural connections are widespread and abundant, bringing readers into the heart of Guinea and the Benin Empire, as well as the renown Frigates of the British East India Company. This short historical fiction creates written art out of history and opens an entire world for many to view with their spectacles, or open eyes, the wonders of the Dark Continent.