Helon Habila, Oil on Water (2011)

“‘Go back before I blast you to hell!’ shouts one of the guards of the so-called Professor,
the guerilla fighters’ leader, to the narrator in Oil on Water, in a remark through which, as I
shall try to show, he unwittingly points to a key intertext of the novel. Published in 2010, Oil
on Water is the work of Nigerian writer Helon Habila.

“From the very first paragraph of the novel, a series of clues encourage the reader to think
that Oil on Water is partly modeled on the Divine Comedy:

“‘I am walking down a familiar path, with incidents neatly labelled and dated, but when I reach
halfway memory lets go of my hand, and a fog rises and covers the faces and places, and I am left
clawing about in the dark, lost, and I have to make up the obscured moments as I go along, make
up the faces and places, even the emotions. Sometimes, to keep on course, I have to return to more
recognizable landmarks, and then, with this safety net under me, I can leap onto less certain terrain.'”

—Sylvain Belluc, “Dante in the Delta: Oil, Water, Environmental Destruction, and the Divine Comedy,” HAL Open Science (December 31, 2024)