Jeff Iwu Delivers a Feminist Tragedy of Survival in Cold Things

By Vida Ogbonna

Jeff Iwu’s latest novel, "Cold Things", opens and closes in the voice of Ijeoma, a battered wife who endures the weight of a  violent household and looks back, older and wearied, in the epilogue. This framing is essential. Although the story alternates between the narration Ekene and Obioma, two cousins whose lives are shaped by a pain they can not easily define, the novel belongs to Ijeoma; her perspective guides the tale of violence, survival, trauma, and silence, marking it as a feminine text. While much of Nigerian literature has explored the tragedy of failed fathers and embattled sons, Iwu places women at the centre of a world shaped by patriarchal violence. His writing presents femininity not as purity, but as a space where strength and self-determination are forged through pain, compromise, and moral ambiguity.

The novel immediately situates the reader in an intimate, domestic space where the everyday intersects with extreme moral tension. Ijeoma’s experiences are both relatable and terrifying. The novel does not rely on melodrama or sensationalism to provoke empathy; it places the reader directly inside her head, and forces confrontation with her thoughts, fears, and strategies for survival. This structural choice is particularly effective in demonstrating how domestic violence is rarely an isolated event, but one that reverberates across families and communities, shaping the psychological landscapes of all involved. By giving Ijeoma the first and last word, Iwu asserts that the story, no matter how it shifts perspectives, is always tethered to the consequences of her actions and her endurance.

The prologue is one of the most chilling depictions of domestic violence in contemporary Nigerian fiction. Ijeoma narrates in present tense, chopping onions as Patrick staggers in from another night of drinking. The knife gleams on the table, yet she reflects, “Tonight, I do not cry. Tonight, I look at the flame under the pot. I watch it flicker, wild but controlled. Like me” (7). Here, silence becomes a weapon and endurance becomes power. Iwu captures the tension and immediacy of domestic oppression in a way that is both realistic and symbolic. When she presses a pillow over Patrick’s face, it is described without melodrama. “I held the pillow in my hands. Not just any pillow, the one I had cried into too many nights, the one that knew the shape of my silence. I pressed it down. Gently at first. Then firmly. Then with everything I had carried for years” (210). In this act, the novel establishes its feminist ethic: survival may demand violence. The careful restraint of language mirrors the control and calculation Ijeoma must exercise to navigate her oppressive circumstances.

Ijeoma’s struggle does not end with the death of her husband. Patriarchy continues in the eyes of her community, in accusations from kin, and in the fragile bodies of her sons. Uncle Lambert’s attempt to claim Patrick’s property is an assertion of male authority, and Ijeoma’s defiance, “Go! Never return, evil people. My children and I don’t need you” (37) is both courage and exposure. Widowhood in Manjo is not freedom but stigma, compounded by gossip. Mama Obioma (also known as Mrs Felicia, Patrick’s sister) spreads rumours that Ijeoma murdered Patrick, policing the social norms and weaponising gender against her. Through her, Iwu shows how women can also enforce patriarchal expectations. These layers of social surveillance amplify the tension in the novel, and demonstrates that liberation is rarely purely personal; it must contend with collective judgment and the moral economy of the community.

Madam Dollars represents another side of female experience. Flamboyant, powerful, and feared, she heads a women’s club with the motto FREEDOM AT HOME AND OUT OF HOME (42). Rumoured to have killed two husbands, her public image is both fascination and suspicion. Ekene’s description, “Her eyes always ticked like the hands of a clock, with determination to do anything for survival, and her mouth raucously chewed bubble gum like a retired she-goat” (42), captures her strangeness and her truth. Madam Dollars shows the cost of female freedom: her power is always questioned, her wealth marked as illegitimate, her freedom tainted by rumour. Through her, Iwu examines the intersection of gender, wealth, and moral judgment, which reveals that societal structures often penalise women for pursuing freedom in ways that men rarely experience.

Both Madam Dollars and Ijeoma live in the uncomfortable space between victimhood and resilience. They survive, yet their survival isolates them and makes them targets of society. Iwu continues a tradition seen in Emecheta’s "The Joys of Motherhood" and Adichie’s "Purple Hibiscus", which projects that female freedom or agency often comes with loss, stigma, and relentless moral judgment. Ijeoma’s relationship with her sons further exposes this tension. Chika cannot forgive her. “This house is a prison,” he says, reducing his mother from protector to jailer (49). Saving her children from abuse becomes another form of confinement, and the novel asks whether resistance can ever be free of consequence. This dynamic between mother and child reveals the generational costs of survival, showing that even protective acts are rarely interpreted purely as care in a patriarchal context.

Ekene offers a softer perspective. He observes Ijeoma’s midnight sobs and whispered confessions: “Patrick… why did you make me do it? I begged you… didn’t I? I begged you to stop before I turned into something I hate” (39). This is not triumph but trauma. Ijeoma is not striding in confidence like Madam Dollars. She is crushed by the contradictions of survival, showing feminism as tragic rather than celebratory. Liberation in Iwu’s world is indistinguishable from loss. Her endurance is a quiet form of resistance, a testament to the psychic and emotional toll exacted on women living under constant threat of violence and societal censure.

The city of Manjo itself amplifies the story. Its name, combining mma and njo (good and bad), becomes a theatre for gender violence. Headlines like “Wife Murders Husband after Domestic Dispute” and “Man Rapes, Impregnates His Daughter in Manjo City” (14-15) suggest that private violence is a public epidemic. Women’s suffering becomes spectacle, and Ijeoma is both one of many and uniquely central to this tragedy. Manjo is not merely a backdrop; it is a participant in the narrative.  The city reflects and magnifies the social forces that punish women for resistance and normalise male aggression. The epilogue returns to Ijeoma’s voice in the present tense: “I felt… nothing. Just a cold stillness” () Survival is not victory but endurance. Violence has not ended; it has hardened into silence.

Iwu’s prose strengthens this vision. Quarrels are described as if they live in Ijeoma’s body: “quarrels everywhere: quarrels on her head; quarrels in her eyes; quarrels in her mouth” (43) Madam Dollars’ grotesque caricature highlights social hostility toward powerful women. Ijeoma’s whispered sobs show the intimate cost of survival. The oscillation between ridicule and lyricism mirrors the reality of women in patriarchy: overly visible, yet unheard. Iwu’s writing blends realism with a heightened awareness of social commentary, giving readers insight into both individual psychology and the broader cultural mechanisms that constrain freedom and moral choice.

The novel also interrogates masculinity in equally nuanced ways. Patrick, Chika, Ekene, Obioma and Uncle Lambert embody different aspects of male failure and complicity. Patrick represents the brutal, unchecked domestic abuser. Chika, unable to forgive his mother, represents the generational internalisation of patriarchal norms. Ekene witnesses these dynamics and experiences the consequences of a violent social order, same as Obioma, a victim of circumstance, who faces betrayal from his Uncle. Uncle Lambert’s claim to patrimony complicates the moral landscape further; he is both victim and perpetrator, a man constrained by societal expectation and personal desire. Iwu avoids simple moral binaries, showing that men, like women, are shaped by a social ecosystem that rewards violence and punishes resistance.

The prison episodes provide yet another dimension. Manjo Prison is both literal and metaphorical which characters like Jazy, Gimba, Peter, Bode, Oshikim and others; it compresses social failure into bodies. Prisoners, warders, and officials are all shown as products of systemic cruelty. The environment of confinement amplifies existing psychological and moral fractures. Ekene observes suicides, psychoses, and ritualised humiliation, all of which highlight how structural neglect becomes a form of sustained violence. These episodes are not plot devices; they are a laboratory for examining human behaviour under extreme conditions. The repetition, secrecy, and haunting that permeate these sections depict the intergenerational trauma that Iwu emphasises throughout the novel.

Psychoanalytic themes are central. Crimes, guilt, and secrecy are never isolated. Ekene carries the memory of each death, each betrayal, into his adult consciousness: “I still carry them in my bones” (213). These memorial fragments bind the intimate to the systemic, suggesting that social violence is always also psychological. The cold stillness of the epilogue is not resolution but an acknowledgment of ongoing entrenchment. This means that survival in "Cold Things" is endurance, not redemption.

Stylistically, Iwu nods to predecessors while asserting his own voice. Proverbs and cadence recall Achebe and Adichie. The interior lives of women echo Emecheta and Atta. Political reportage and systemic critique reflect Habila. The mythic, fatalistic tone aligns with Obioma. Yet Iwu transforms these influences into a novel of moral ambiguity, creating characters who are neither heroes nor villains. Ijeoma, Madam Dollars, Ekene, Obioma and Uncle Lambert exist in the grey spaces of survival, ethics, and social expectation. The cacophony of rumor, gossip, courtroom scene, and market chant renders Manjo a modern agora, where justice is public opinion, and morality is constantly contested.

If the novel has weaknesses, they are deliberate. Repetition hardens into insistence, and certain scenes verge on melodrama. This mirrors trauma itself: actions are relived, memories return in cycles, and suffering is never fully linear. Readers expecting tidy moral closure will be challenged. Those willing to engage with the novel’s social and psychological depth will find it urgent and resonant.

Finally, "Cold Things" is a contemporary Nigerian novel that exposes the intertwining of private and public violence. Ijeoma’s narrative asserts the cost of survival for women, the consequences of patriarchal collapse, and the ways social structures compound personal trauma. Patrick, Chika, Ekene, Obioma, and Lambert embody the fragility and failure of masculinity, while Ijeoma and Madam Dollars demonstrate the painful compromises of feminine endurance. Jeff Iwu presents a world where survival is hard-won, and where the threads connecting individuals form a reflection of societal dysfunction. The novel belongs to Ijeoma. Her hands pressing the pillow at the beginning, her voice naming her coldness in the epilogue, mark her as both survivor and agent. Through her, Jeff Iwu delivers a modern feminist tragedy that is as haunting as it is essential. The novel refuses to romanticise survival; it shows the cost, the compromise, and the quiet endurance that defines life for women who navigate a world structured by violence, rumuor, and power. It is a novel that will linger in the mind, challenging readers to rethink morality, gender, and the human capacity for endurance.