Mrs Mahmood Study Guide

Segun Afolabi is a Nigerian author, novelist, and short story writer. He was born in Kaduna, Nigeria, a city located in northwestern Nigeria. The son of a diplomat, Afolabi grew up in several international locations, including the Congo, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, and Japan. When he was 9 years old, his family sent him to study in England, and he later attended university in Wales at University College, Cardiff. His short story “Monday Morning” won the 2005 Caine Prize for African Writing, and his first novel, Goodbye Lucille, was published in 2007 and awarded the Authors’ Club First Novel Award. Afolabi now lives and works in London.

Nigerian presence in London has a longstanding history that dates back to the transatlantic slave trade. Prior to 1960, when Nigeria gained independence from the British, many Nigerians traveled to the United Kingdom to study, much like Segun Afolabi himself. Even following independence from the British, Nigerian refugees continued migrating to the United Kingdom due to Nigerian political unrest in the 1960s, the collapse of the petroleum boom in the 1980s, and the military dictatorship of Sani Abacha in 1995. Robust Nigerian communities continue to exist in London, Liverpool, and other British cities today. In “Mrs Mahmood,” Afolabi writes that Mr. Mahmood and Isobel also lived in New York City prior to moving to London—significant waves of Nigerian immigration can also be traced to the United States throughout the 1960s and 1980s, largely for the purpose of undergraduate and postgraduate education.

Segun Afolabi’s full-length works include his debut short story collection, A Life Elsewhere, published in 2006, and his first novel, Goodbye Lucille, published in 2007. Like “Mrs Mahmood,” the stories of A Life Elsewhere unravel the complexities of emigration and diasporic life by focusing on characters who must make homes in new places. Goodbye Lucille similarly sheds light on how Nigerian immigrants experience Europe, featuring a protagonist who lives in Berlin and misses a girl he left behind in London. In 2001, Nigerian novelist and poet Helon Habila won the Caine Prize for his story “Love Poem,” which was published in Prison Stories, a short story collection about the brutalities faced by often-innocent incarcerated people. Another Nigerian writer who won the Caine Prize is the short story writer E. C. Osondu, who won in 2009 with the short story “Waiting,” originally published in the literary magazine Guernica.