Saving Mr. Ugwu By Lin Anderson

Saving Mr. Ugwu is a novel by Lin Anderson written in 2012. The story is about Mr. Ugwu and his family, who live in the African bush, more specific in Nigeria which is a old British colony according to the internet. There is a clear racial division between the white and black race in Nigeria. As if this was not enough, there is also a division among the black race. We have the Hausas and the Igbo tribes. Mr. Ugwu and his family belongs to the Igbo tribe, while people such as his houseboy is a Hausas

The Ugwu family used to live i Lagos which is the biggest city in Nigeria, but they moved to a more uncivilized part of Nigeria because Mr Ugwu got a job there. From the Ugwu family’s point of view the bush is not a desirable place to live. ''Bringing his family to this place with its dry barren landscape, its uncivilized way of life, was totally unfair (….) ( side 1, line 37 - 38)''
Mr Ugwu who is the main charterer of the story describes the bush as “godforsaken”, “uncivilized” and “barren”.
Mr. Ugwu is an Igbo, which is one of the more dominant tribes in Nigeria. He is born in Lagos, which is a more civilized part of Nigeria. Mr. Ugwu likes to think of himself as a western man, but he is below the western man, even though he is well educated and went to the British school in Lagos. Now he works as an accountant and it …show more content…
''Mr Ugwu does not like his neighbor Jake Jarvis he believes him to be an ungodly man who drinks alcohol and goes with prostitutes” (side 3, line 87-88) This monkey in a cage is a important symbol in the novel. The monkey has no rights and can only do, what his owner tells him to do. Mr. Ugwu can identify himself with the monkey. Mr. Ugwu has to do what ever the white authorities want him to do, which is giving the black workers a smaller paycheck than what they had expected, because the white men didn't think they did their job properly, and Mr. Ugwu is going to suffer from