Nigerian writer Chigozie Obioma’s debut novel is a Bildungsroman set in Nigeria in the 1990s. It focuses on the coming-of-age of Benjamin, the narrator and protagonist, whose Bildung clearly parallels, in an allegorical way, the nation’s. Overall, history looms large in this novel which follows the tradition launched by earlier Nigerian writers. The Bildungsroman genre seems to be effective to put forth the “revolutionary politics” and poetics at the heart of Obioma’s project.