A Critical Review of Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter: The Fire and the Flight

Author: Dr Nnamdi Nwogwugwu

Publisher: BookFuel

Place of Publication: London

Date of Publication: 2025

Volume: 44 Chapters, spread across 657 pages

Reviewer: Professor Samuel Ngozi Agu

Introduction

The book, Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter: The Fire and the

Flight, written by Dr Nnamdi Nwogwugwu blends fiction, history and experience. It

is a philosophically rich and symbolically charged narrative that weaves together

memory, trauma, flight, hope, and the existential weight of war. The novel cannot be

understood outside the biographical, historical, and intellectual context of its author.

Dr. Nwogwugwu, a UK-based medical doctor and neuropsychiatrist of Igbo extraction,

was born during the Nigeria–Biafra war and educated in both Nigeria and Rostov,

Russia - a trajectory that gives him a unique vantage point on catastrophic violence,

displacement, the fragility of human life, and the complex ethics of survival.

His medical training, especially in neuropsychiatry, informs the narrative’s precise

attention to human vulnerability, suffering, and the delicate balance between death

and survival. His wartime birth places him in the shadow of one of Africa’s most

devastating conflicts, giving him a lived connection to themes of exile, fear, hunger,

and collective trauma. His cross-cultural academic formation enriches the narrative’s

interplay between African communitarian consciousness, Russian existential depth,

and Western philosophical imagery. This multi-layered background produces a novel

that functions not merely as fiction but as a philosophical testimony of war, memory,

and the quest for meaning. Hence, introducing the book, Dr Nwogwugwu asserts that

"Even silence has a history. Even snow remembers footprints long after they've

melted."

Reading Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter: The Fire and the

Flight reopened doors I had spent a lifetime trying to keep closed. Every page

awakened in me the old tremors of trauma - the suffocating fear, the gnawing hunger,

the unnameable anxiety that once wrapped itself around my four-year-old mind like a

second skin. As I journeyed through its chapters, I found myself once again standing

in the long shadow of a war that uprooted everything familiar.

The book revived the memories I had buried beneath years of silence: the horrific

sight of bodies strewn along the roads, lying lifeless on bush paths, abandoned in the

undergrowth; children swollen by hunger; mothers searching for water that didn’t exist; fathers who walked with the hollow eyes of men carrying more sorrow than

strength.

It brought back the echo of our own flight - my parents, siblings, relations, and I

-driven into endless journeys that blurred day into night and night into something

darker. We walked through forests that felt haunted, across roads littered with despair,

fleeing from dangers we couldn’t see but could feel breathing down our necks. Every

step was a negotiation with death. Every rustle in the bush felt like an omen. Every

rumble of artillery, near or distant, was a reminder that home had become a memory,

and survival an uncertain hope.

Once upon a Time did not merely tell a story; it summoned the ghosts of my own. In

its pages, I became again that small child clutching the hand of a mother who

somehow stayed strong, even when hope was thin, even when the world around us

seemed to be collapsing into fire and hunger. It reminded me of how war imprints

itself not only on the land but on the body, the mind, and the soul - how its memory

never fully leaves, but sleeps lightly, waiting for a sound, a word, or a story to awaken

it.

This is a story of what is inherited not just land or blood or language, but memory.

The kind of memory that travels not through dates and headlines, but through the

softest gestures: a letter unsent, a scar left unexplained, a voice that breaks mid-song.

Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter: The Fire and the Flight is an

ambitious and emotionally charged novel that blends history, memory, biography, and

philosophical reflection into a sweeping narrative of human suffering and resilience.

In this remarkable work, Dr. Nnamdi Nwogwugwu - medical doctor, neuropsychiatrist,

and child of the Nigeria–Biafra War - offers a text that transcends fiction. It is at once

testimony, indictment, elegy, and cultural philosophy.

The book’s 657 pages and 44 chapters are not merely chapters of a novel; they are

acts of remembering. The narrative reanimates the landscapes of war - its hunger, its

silences, its moral fractures - and the long shadow it casts across generations.

Drawing from his sophisticated medical background, personal proximity to war

trauma, and cross-cultural academic formation spanning Nigeria and Russia,

Nwogwugwu composes a story that is anatomically precise in its portrayal of

suffering and spiritually profound in its reflections on memory.

The author’s epigraphic declaration - “Even silence has a history. Even snow

remembers footprints long after they’ve melted” - establishes the philosophical

temper of the work: memory is not inert. It follows families, villages, nations, and

even unborn generations. This novel is, therefore, a literary excavation: an attempt to

make audible the stories that war tried to bury.

Historical Depth and Narrative Craft

1. Reconstructing a Nation’s Broken Genesis

A notable strength of the book is Dr Nwogwugwu’s ability to reconstruct Nigeria’s

historical formation with clarity and moral urgency. The chapters detailing the colonial stitching of Nigeria, the indirect rule in the North, and the fragile

foundations of the post-colonial state reveal a writer deeply attuned to the political

engineering that created a nation destined for friction.

With poetic minimalism, the narrative captures 1914 not as a date but as a wound:

“They didn’t need to redraw the map. They only needed to count. Not

just heads - but futures.”

In these early chapters, the reader encounters Nigeria as an “arranged” reality; an

unrooted political marriage whose contradictions would combust in the 1960s. The

brilliance here is not only historical accuracy but narrative economy: Nwogwugwu

condenses decades of political maneuvers into vivid scenes and haunting dialogues

that reveal the seeds of catastrophe.

2. The Descent into War

The chapters chronicling the 1966 coups, the pogroms, the Biafran secession, and the

diplomatic theatre involving Britain, Russia, and Nigeria are among the book’s most

compelling. They are written with the urgency of lived truth and the precision of

someone who understands both political violence and human fragility.

The text does not merely retell the story of Biafra; it re-humanises it:

The anger in northern barracks; the fear in eastern villages; the duplicity of foreign

governments; the cascading betrayals of political elites.

The narrative exposes war as a multilayered theatre where no actor is innocent, and

where the cost is always paid by ordinary people.

Philosophy of War, Memory, and Trauma

1. War as Inheritance

The novel asserts a central philosophical claim: war is not merely a historical event; it

is a generational inheritance. Through the character of young Kasiobi (Kasi), born at

the end of the war, Nwogwugwu shows how trauma travels silently through families:

“Not with birth.

Not with joy.

But with silence.”

This silence becomes a philosophical motif: the silence of a father damaged by

invisible neurological trauma; the silence of a nation unwilling to confront its past; the

silence of a people who were told to “move on” but never healed.

2.The Neuropsychiatrist's Gaze

Perhaps the most original dimension of the book is the integration of medical insight,

especially neuropsychiatric understanding, into the psychological landscape of post-war

igboland. The neurological explanation of Ikenna’s silent suffering - damage to the

frontal lobes, the “silent injuries of the brain” - elevates the narrative into a profound

reflection on how war alters human personality, memory, and cognition.

This is not sentimental writing; it is clinical, philosophical, and humane.

3. War’s Afterlife: Silence as a Character

Part Two (“In the Shadows of Silence”) is a masterclass in literary minimalism.

Nwogwugwu demonstrates that the aftermath of war is often more brutal than the

war itself. He writes:

“They say the war ended in January…

But the truth is quieter. And heavier.

The war did not end.

It hid.”

Here the novel transitions from historical fiction into psychological and sociological

commentary. This is where the book’s moral force lies: its refusal to allow the reader

to romanticise survival.

A Narrative of Loss, Resilience, and Becoming

1. Children of a Broken Nation

The book’s portrait of post-war Igbo society - orphans, widows, apprentices,

migrants, dreamers - forms a sociological chronicle of a people rebuilding with

nothing but resilience.

The story of Igba Boi (apprenticeship system) is powerfully layered: an economic

system, a social contract, and a philosophy of inter-generational justice.

These chapters elevate the narrative beyond war literature into a meditation on

African communal ethics

2. Kasi: A Generation’s Intellectual Rebellion

Kasi’s evolution from a quiet observer into a perceptive, rebellious young thinker is a

symbol of a generation that refused to inherit silence.

His anger against injustice, his struggle with Nigeria’s quota system, and his

confrontation with the inadequacies of post-war democracy reflect contemporary

tensions in Nigeria’s intellectual landscape.

The questions he writes in his notebook -

“What if we were told to forget because remembering would demand justice?” -

are both historical and philosophical; they interrogate the ethics of memory in a nation

allergic to truth.

3. Amara: The Feminine Side of War’s Aftermath

The interludes written from Amara’s perspective are among the most poignant. Her

reflections on disenfranchised grief - grief denied the right to exist - create a feminine

lens that balances the book’s political and military themes.

Her voice is a quiet but powerful indictment of cultural expectations, patriarchal

systems, and the internal exile of children who carry unspoken burdens.

Stylistic and Thematic Excellence

1. Poetic Prose

Nwogwugwu writes with lyrical intensity. His sentences carry the weight of both

memory and metaphor. Short lines - sometimes just words - function as emotional

percussion, forcing the reader to pause and feel.

2. Symbolism

Several recurrent symbols animate the book:

The Flute: survival, grief, and the language beyond words.

The River: memory, history, the flow of time.

Silence: trauma, complicity, and unspoken truth.

Snow (Russia) and Harmattan (Nigeria): the coldness of exile and the dryness of

forgotten wounds.

The Kolanut: The kolanut, described by Ibe's father, is a powerful symbol of

traditional Igbo values: "respect," "welcome," and "peace". It "carries the prayers

of our ancestors" and "binds friends and enemies alike".

Its symbolic function is juxtaposed with the reality of a nation that shattered this traditional binding.

3. Multigenerational Storytelling

The narrative spans continents and decades, yet remains cohesive because it is

anchored in Ahiaba, a village that becomes both a geographical space and a

philosophical metaphor for survival.

Critical Assessment

While the novel achieves extraordinary emotional and historical depth, several critical

points deserve mention:

Density and Length:

At 657 pages, the narrative can sometimes feel overwhelming. Certain chapters could

have benefited from tighter editing to maintain narrative momentum.

Occasional Didacticism:

Nwogwugwu’s intellectual and philosophical impulses occasionally lead to expository passages that, while insightful, risk overshadowing the story’s organic emotional

flow.

Fragmented Structure:

The non-linear, interspersed interludes - though powerful - may challenge readers

unfamiliar with the historical context.

However, these are minor criticisms when weighed against the novel’s achievements.

The book’s ambition is vast, and its emotional and intellectual rewards justify its

density.

Conclusion

Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter: The Fire and the Flight is a

monumental work of African historical fiction and philosophical testimony. It is one

of the most compelling literary accounts of the Biafran War and its aftermath written

in recent decades.

Nwogwugwu gives voice to the voiceless, restores dignity to forgotten memories, and

challenges Nigeria’s culture of enforced amnesia. He invites readers not just to

witness history, but to feel it - its heat, its hunger, its silences.

This novel is more than a story; it is an archive of pain, resilience, and hope. It

belongs on bookshelves beside Achebe’s There Was a Country, Adichie’s Half of a

Yellow Sun, and Soyinka’s wartime memoirs.

It is a gift to African literature - and to the collective memory of a nation still learning

how to confront its past.

Professor Samuel Ngozi Agu is a Professor Of Philosophy and former Dean Of the Faculty Of Humanities at Abia State University (ABSU), Nigeria.