Blackass by A Igoni Barrett review – a cocktail of Kafka and comedy

This modern-day Metamorphosis explores what it would be like for a Nigerian to wake up with white skin

In A Igoni Barrett’s debut novel, the main character, 33-year-old Lagosian Furo Wariboko, wakes up one ordinary morning and ... is white. Later in the novel, we meet a writer named Igoni who changes into a woman. But these transformations are not straightforward ones. Despite his white skin, green eyes and red hair, Furo’s eponymous ass remains “robustly black”; despite her big boobs and womanly curves, Igoni, now known as Morpheus, still retains her/his penis.

This is not the first time Barrett (pictured right) has toyed with the themes of psychological and physical transformation. In the title story of his collection Love is Power or Something Like That, a policeman is a loving father and husband at home, but changes into a cruel and imperious brute the moment he puts on his uniform. Here, as in Blackass, outward alteration triggers a psychological change.

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