"She stared at her reflection in the huge mirror… she hated the sight that greeted her – the large landscape of a forehead, the flared nostrils that were begging for a surgeon’s knife, the puffy lips, the spaced out eyes and the gap between the two incisors, which could clearly accommodate another tooth. She was a monstrosity to look at without make-up."
Jude Dibia is a Nigerian novelist. In 2007, he won the Ken Saro-Wiwa Prize for Prose for his novel Unbridled. He has been shortlisted for awards such as Nigeria Prize for Literature, the Commonwealth Prize and the Swedish Natur och Kultur Pris.
"The ocean refused to be still; it took more, claimed more, and retreated less but paradoxically the hungry sea left behind more of its unwanted children, its vomit littering Scorpion’s little patch of beach-front: a seagull’s skull, uncapped beer bottles, horse scat, empty packets of cigarettes, the left foot of a size twelve shoe, a dead army of used condoms, and an old deflated football."
"Once you set foot in Underground City, you felt its touch and its breath on you."
"A conglomeration of roguishly built shanty homes, it flanked the Sambo creek, a torrid expanse of water twisting like loins to the sea."
"That yellow house wey get green-white-green for doormat and opposite am you go see Mama Sikirat beer parlour or when you reach the end of the street, you go see one plank like bridge wey dey near Holy Ghost Church, cross am and in front you go see the house wey get tap for de front.”"