'Through my stories, I inform society'

• Published date: 08 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

Ernest Nnamdi Onuoha is a novelist,poet and politician. He is also a public analyst and a graduate of Abia State University, Uturu. A member of the Association of Nigerian Authors,some of his books include Challenges of Existence, Biafra Victims, Beauty in the Rubble and others. Apart from being published in many journals, home and abroad, he is a manager with Dana Pharmaceuticals, overseeing the Southeast. He says in this interaction with EDOZIE UDEZE that the quest to find solutions to numerous human problems challenges him to write and lots more.

WHAT triggers your muse?

The quest to find solutions to humanity many challenges and the curiosity to understand nature, the beauty of cascading waters, the flurry of the sun rays upon the earth, the freedom in creation to choose what cause to pursue. My mind is also challenged by various limitations of human nature, the several births and deaths, of pleasure and pain. For these chains of phenomena, of contradictions and ironies, my mind flows through the pen pouring emotions and spirituality into the map of life.

At what point in your life did you realise you would be a writer?

At the intersection of life where my mind found a bridge to cross the river.

What book triggered the muse in you and why?

It was the reading of David Copper Field by Charles Dickens that arose my literary mind because of the setting and characters and challenges too, which were like my own challenges in life. No wonder, the title of my first novel is: Challenges of Existence and published in 1999.

Of all the books you have read which character struck you most?

I cannot stuck myself with one character, but each character had a foot print in my life, be it the Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford, I will take Manhattan by Judith Krantz and House of Symobles(the Eagle Woman) by Prof Akachi Ezigbo and others. Some gave me motivations, some determination and Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare interpreted love to me.

In what genre of literature do you express yourself most?

I have been able to find a medium of expression of the inner recesses of my mind through prose and poetry. Through prose we tell our stories, which are...