Being an opara -- an oldest son -- has privileges, such as always getting the largest piece of meat in the soup.
It also has obligations, such as responsibility for the family should anything happen to the father. And when Kingsley Ibe's British-educated but impoverished father dies, he is expected to step up and take over.
Kings (as his friends call him) has always been obedient and studious. To please his parents, he graduated from the university, but in Nigeria the economy is collapsing and jobs are impossible to get without "long legs" -- that is, influence. "I shuddered at the thought of ending up like [my father] -- full brain, empty pocket," he says.
He wants to marry his girlfriend, he wants to take care of his mother and siblings, but he needs money. Enter Cash Daddy, Kings' uncle, who has made a fortune as a "419 guy," writing those scamming e-mails that Nigeria has become famous for. It is apparently a lucrative profession; Cash Daddy lives in a vast compound with bodyguards and staff, owns a fleet of expensive cars, has a high-maintenance wife and a string of girlfriends.
Cash Daddy is not a caricature, though, but a wonderful character, a big-hearted, larger-than-life guy. Yes, he's scamming people (primarily Americans), but he's also doing good with his wealth. He builds orphanages and hospitals, paves the streets of the town. He's deeply loyal to his family, and he opens his moneyed world to his nephew.
Kings knows how shameful this illegal work is, but little by little he is drawn into the business and finds that he's surprisingly good at it. Yet it comes with a price: His girlfriend leaves him, and his mother won't accept his lavish gifts.
Nigerian writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a wonderful and convincing storyteller. In "I Do Not Come to You By Chance" (Hyperion, 402 pages, $15.99), her first novel, she takes her time, spinning a rich, lively story, sprinkling in Nigerian folk wisdom, popular culture, and brief but vivid scenes of Nigerian daily life (a young boy on the street dangles seven dying rats from a string to show the effectiveness of rat poison he is selling).
Kings is a heartbreaking narrator, such a stand-up guy, so true to his family, sucked into a flamboyant life he never coveted. And faced, ultimately, with a moral quandary: Is it worth it to gain great wealth if it causes him to lose everything that matters?
