The Minotaur at Calle Lanza

December 1, 2023

Nigerian-born writer Madu was seven when his family moved to Detroit in 1998. Life there was tenuous and hard. His parents eventually became teachers but always lived on the edge of failure. Teaching in an age of COVID-19 made it worse. The second child of six and the only underachiever, Madu grew to hate his father; he says that he knew his father hated him. Then in the fall of 2020, Madu earns a writing residency in Venice, Italy. A Black immigrant, speaking no Italian, he savors his aloneness in Venice during lockdown because it gives him time and motive to think through his past. The Argentinian miniaturist Borges wrote of a minotaur in a labyrinth: it only takes two mirrors to create the labyrinth. Like the minotaur, Madu looks in the mirror and stares back at his ancestors. He never forgets his foreignness. Without warning, he transforms into a minotaur, frightening those around him, pursued and attacked. He re-emerges human but something has changed: he now sees his father fresh, forgives and loves him. He leaves Venice understanding better why he's like he is. VERDICT Madu's book is difficult to categorize but hauntingly effective. It has no fail-safe audience but will reward whoever picks it up.--David Keymer

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2023
An author's trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn. In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan "to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports." Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu's experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son's choices. Unfortunately, the author's seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libert� bridge was "magical," but nothing he describes--the "endless water on both sides," the nearby seagulls--is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, "I was one of the few Black people around." He cites Borges, giving special note to the author's "The House of Asterion," in which the minotaur "explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth" of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book's second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with "the head of a bull" and his body "larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome." It's an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before. An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.

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