Penned in Rage: Book Review

Comparison to Other Contemporaneous Literature from Sub-Saharan Africa

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The Search for Othella Savage (2025) touches on themes that are common in contemporary Literature from the sub-region.

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1. Over- Sexualisation and Objectification of Black African Women

 

‘This is Scotland, my sisters. There are not a lot of Black women here. And so many men see us as a fantasy. This is the pastor’s big scheme,’ claims Jattu.

 

Source- P. 74: The Search for Othella Savage, (2025) COPYRIGHTED: Foday Mannah, Published by Quercus.

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Oversexualisation of the Black female doesn’t have its origins in Literature from sub-Saharan Africa but in American Literature.  Attractive Black women were kept as slaves by wealthy white owners because of these women’s curvy bodies.

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The predominant theme in Foday Mannah’s debut novel is the offer of the Black female as a sex toy to rich white donors by Pastor Ranka and his wife Amanda from the Lion Mountain Church.  Vis-à-vis this fetish centred around the Black woman’s form is the misogynistic belief held by Pastor Ranka and Santa (Gibril Massie) that women and girls are sexually immoral. Nonetheless, it is acceptable for men to find pleasure in an African woman’s body. It must be stressed that the author also presents normal mixed couples like Jattu and older, wealthier, Scotsman Callum who are blissfully happy together. Anaka Hart also dates Nursing course drop-out, Khalil.

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In Dream Count (2025) by Chimamanda Ngozi,  protagonist Omelogor writes about Nigerian men’s fixation with intercourse in her For Men Only blog, while eleven-year-old Chimuka is taken advantage of by Bo Humprey (her aunt Bo Sitali’s husband) in Mubanga Kalimamukwento’s 2019, The Mourning Bird. In fact, whereas Pastor Ranka blames women attending nightclubs and spreading diseases in Sierra Leone, it was Tata, Chimuka’s dad who infected his wife with a HIV.

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Again, sex crimes against African women by rich, powerful men is not a new phenomenon in Literature from the sub-region. While thankfully, this level of misogyny though making a comeback in the United States is rare in the United Kingdom, Foday Mannah is right to explore its deep-rooted nature in patriarchal West African societies.

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Chimamanda Ngozi (2025) in Dream Count, in which she  concerns herself with how  visceral women’s bodies are, while delving into Sexual Relationships, explores male chauvinism, amongst Igbo males from Nigeria but more importantly,  she recounts the back story of Kadiatou, now in her forties who had been raped by her restaurant manager: Francois in Guinea and was again sexually assaulted while working as a chambermaid in a hotel in New York by a French politician. Her rape made Kadiatou the subject of racist comments and accusations of being a prostitute.

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Hatred of women is what led to the abduction and death of two female church ambassadors  (please see below for a timeline and crimes committed by the Car Boot Killer). I must add on a humorous note, Sierra Leone can now boast of its very own serial killer protagonist, from The Search for Othella Savage.

 

2. Religious Fanaticism Versus Religious Hypocrisy

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Santa - AKA Gibril Massie -  in The Search for Othella Savage blames the women who were church ambassadors for bringing, ‘satanic behaviour into a holy space…the good church became a place of shame and sacrilege.’ Similarly so, Pastor Ranka  in two sermons he preached demonised women, accusing them of debauchery and spreading diseases.  

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Should these women who were essentially escorts be blamed for having sex with male donors

when the Humanitarian side of Lion Mountain church included pimping out Black girls to rich White men?

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I was stunned by Foday Mannah’s portrayal of religious fanaticism in his book.  It reminded me of Chimamanda's earlier work. In Purple Hibiscus (Adichie, 2004), Papa Eugine, main protagonist: Kambili and Jaja’s dad, is a devout Catholic in public but a monster, wife-beater, physically violent and verbally abusive dad at home. Likewise, we soon see in Foday Mannah’s novel that Pastor Ranka is a hypocrite.

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On the other hand, religious tolerance in Sierra Leone is epitomised by the union of Auntie Theresa is a fanatical Christian married to Hawa’s Muslim dad. Khalil is Muslim but works for seemingly kind-hearted Pastor Ranka.

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 3. Migration to the West

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Hawa, Othella, Stella, Khalil, Kumba and Aisha all migrated to the United Kingdom from sub-Saharan Africa either for economic reasons and/or to further their education. While Hawa and Othella might have graduated with enviable qualifications, most migrants appear to be like Aisha who end up frustrated and have to settle for low paid low skilled work with Lesley Links. The placement of the African migrant in the big global economies is the subject of many ferocious debates. Even where they’ve obtained a British passport, unlike Khalil, according to London Auntie, are they still compelled to the bottom of the ladder? Are they often the source of cheap labour as evidenced in Americanah (2013)? Ifemelu has her hair braided by French-speaking African migrants and she tells us how newly arrived migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are positioned at the bottom of hierarchy in American society. In fact, a famous line from Americanah is that London is a leveller, meaning high and low-skilled African migrants all contend for low-paid jobs until their immigration status changes.

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Obinze the other protagonist in Americanah (2013), is like Foday Mannah’s Hawa Barrie, Othella Savage, Aisha and Khalil who left their home countries to try their luck in Britain. Obinze outstayed his welcome and was deported back to Lagos from England. Foday Mannah’s Khalil’s papers are not in order. Migrants are afraid to speak to DC McKeown in The Search for Othella Savage because of their immigration status. (I myself was a Metropolitan Police Constable who for eight years was involved in carrying our raids in areas with a high ethnic population and witnessed the fear in migrants’ eyes first hand.)

 

Besides, one constantly questions whether or not foreign countries offer African migrants what we perceive they do.

 

In The Devil that Danced on the Water (2002), Aminata lives between Scotland and Sierra Leone. In passing, she relays the covert prejudice encountered back in the sixties and seventies especially from her maternal Scottish granddad, though Aminata is chiefly concerned with her family unit. Both Aminata and Foday offer us an outsider's view into Scotland from the perspective of a Sierra Leone a migrant, albeit at different points of time. Aminata’s Scotland was not as easy to navigate as Foday Mannah’s protagonists’ one – a resourceful Sierra Leonean community has grown which offers a safety net for Hawa Barrie, from hairdressers to good cooks, to church members – Sierra Leone has exported its beautiful culture to Scotland.

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4. Deceptive Human Nature and Corruption

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'Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life.' Anaka Hurt quoting Marquez.

SOURCE - P. 48, The Search for Othella Savage (2025), COPYRIGHTED, Foday Mannah.

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This quotation sums up the deceptive nature of some of the characters in The Search for Othella Savage. I gasped when Hawa found out Othella, her bast friend and flatmate attended Pastor Ranka’s house parties. Worse still, she had attacked a bloke for touching her up the wrong way. Who’s the real Othella Savage? Her mother, Dr Zaydah Savage had let her daughter Othella hide  in their house in Freetown all the while Dr Savage was pretending to cooperate with Hawa who was searching for Othella.

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Who’s the real Pastor Ranka? Is he a kind benevolent Christian or a corrupt misogynistic greedy businessman?

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Do Khalil and Kumba Matturi represent the enablers and beneficiaries of corrupt practices of the Lion Mountain Church both in Sierra Leone and on the world stage?  Should the argument be that the end justifies the means even if the methods used in the acquisition of donor funds that are invested in orphanages and goodwill projects in Sierra  Leone are demeaning to women?

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Even if Cecil Ranka is embezzling funds, doesn’t he contribute to his brother’s ventures which at least ensured newly arrived students and migrants from Sierra Leone lived in nice, affordable accommodation?  

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If no one battered an eyelid when Tina Kanu’s reportage uncovered corruption is it because there is a level of tolerance for such behaviours? In fact, the incarceration of Tina Kanu mirrors the  treatment of journalists like the tragic Ade Coker as in Purple Hibiscus by the caricatured Babangida regime.

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The answers to these questions would explain why political and personal corruption are rife in Sierra Leone today.

 

Foday Mannah barely lifts the lid on the effects of political corruption in our home country through the character of the Minister of Trade and Industry: Cecil Ranka. For a more comprehensive look, one must read Aminata Forna’s: The Devil that Danced on the Water (2002). Her medically qualified dad returned to Sierra Leone in the early sixties but was caught up in the violent postcolonial struggles of the APC/All Peoples Congress and SLPP/Sierra Leone Peoples Party. An inherent factor which led to her dad’s disappearance was the corruption among politicians jostling to take over power.

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Political corruption is also a prevalent theme in most of Chimamanda's books - in Half of a Yellow Sun (2017) the conflict between Igbo and Hausa government officials, military officers and traders in postcolonial Nigeria led to the Biafran war.  We read about the same economic conditions in Sierra Leone - brought on by poor governance - which Hawa describes to people in Scotland in The Search for Othella Savage.

 

So, Literature from sub-Saharan Africa often portrays social realism as a product of bad governance, as demonstrated by Foday Mannah. The migrant is then expected to take on the role of a provider for families back home. Ramat sees her struggling hotel chambermaid sister Hawa as a cash cow that could afford to sponsor Ramat's lavish wedding to Stephen. Relatives in Sierra Leone had a wish list for Hawa too.

 

Novelist Foday Mannah’ ends his tale on a positive note. The Anti-Corruption Committee apprehends corrupt politician Cecil Ranka. We can only hope in this case life imitates art.

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References:

Adichie, C. N. Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), 4th Estate.

Adichie, C. N. Americanah (2013) 4th Estate.

Adichie, C. N. Purple Hibiscus (2004) 4th Estate

Adichie, C. N. Dream Count (2025) 4th Estate

Forna, A. The Devil that Danced on the Water (2002) HarperCollins

Kalimamukwento, M. The Mourning Bird (2019) Jacana Media

Mannah, F. The search for Othella Savage (2025), Quercus.

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