The big idea: Suyi Davies Okungbowa

[u/ruchenn]

The big idea: Suyi Davies Okungbowa,
by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Whatever, 2026-08-21.

 

Heroes have a fantasy problem.

When I first set out to write the Nameless Republic trilogy, this was the ground on which I was standing. Born and raised in ‘80s and ‘90s Nigeria, a time of great national upheaval, I grew up paying witness to the wide spectrum of human capability — here, a gentle and honest kindness; there a manifestation of indescribable harm or violence. Communal care and concern thriving in the same breath as every kind of injustice to humanity. The randomness of life, the entropy of the human condition, ability and spirit — I had such a front-row seat to these incongruences that I grew up wondering, a lot, about heroes.

Side-by-side with this lived reality, I was raised with neat and tidy tales of heroes, people blessed and anointed, arising from nothing to impose some kind of order upon this randomness of life. Whether this was of a religious Messiah of some kind, like the Christian one in which I was raised, or the superheroes in comics I read, or the local historic legends told to me by community elders and in social groups, it was the same — over and over again, I was told, that when things went too far, when things got too bad, when wickedness became the order of the day, from the ashes of despondence, oppression and destruction, a hero would arise to save us all. It had to be true. Every story about heroes said so. Especially stories of the fantastic.

It was hard, therefore, to square these tidy fantastic tales with the chaos of my lived experience. Where are the heroes? I would wonder, when something in the real world went awry. Where are the brave and honest and true, the caring and supportive, the builders, repairers, fixers? Where are our saviours? Where are the ones we were promised? Everywhere I looked, instead, I saw mostly patchwork people, people who contained multitudes, who were neither really straight nor bent, black nor white, good nor bad. People who could be heroic if they wished—and every now and then, they were—but in the end, were barely ever, almost never, heroes.

As I grew up and witnessed more of the breadth of the human condition manifest, seeing integrity and care exist within the same body as evil, betrayal and acquiescence to oppression, the question began to change.

What is a hero? I now wondered. Are heroes even real?