The Half-God of Rainfall

Unexpected journeys in godhood and sports

The Half-God of Rainfall is a story of ancient deities and their impact on the lives of mortals, told through a distinctly modern lens. Its hero is Demi (Kwame Odoom), the child of Zeus and a mortal woman. His mother, Modupe (Rakie Ayola), was given the protection of Osún, the Òrisà of rivers, only to have that protection fail due to a contest between the Òrisà's God of Thunder and Zeus, with a mortal of the winner's choice as a prize. Demi, half-god of rainfall, is born immediately from his mother's rape and grows up knowing both her love and grief, and his own uncontrollable powers. We meet him by the side of a basketball court, barred from play because of his tendency to literally flood the land when he cries, at the moment he turns his ability to "make it rain" from a literal ability into a figurative one and begins his rise to the top of world-class basketball - and attracts the notice of both the Òrisà and the Greek pantheon.

The language of Half-God is gorgeous, full of rhyme and flow that demands to be "voiced", even if you're just talking in your own head on a packed train carriage. On the page, it's subtle and fluid, and the transformation and feeling of "discovery" as each of those rhymes and lyrical moments appears in sound is one that I delighted in. Running through this is an exploration of dialect and narrative mode, from lines of dialogue that feel lifted from classical translations or myth retellings to more modern vernacular, like the exploration of "Nigerian tongues round American accents" on the children's basketball court. It makes for a rich reading experience that translates as well as you'd expect to stage, where it falls on just two actors to play out this range of voices and to differentiate the revolving set of gods and mortals of these various pantheons for the audience's benefit.

(Full review at link below)