When African Mythology Meets Science Fiction: Inside Dexter Loko’s Ambitious “The Bako Of Zereshé”

A Novel That Refuses Easy Classification

EVERY compelling heroic story begins with a longing. Sometimes that longing takes the form of a search for purpose. At other times, it becomes a journey into a world that exists beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience.

Dexter Loko’s The Bako of Zereshé, published in 2026 by GrandTouch Press, Lagos, belongs firmly to the latter tradition, but it also complicates it. The novel crosses the boundaries between fantasy, speculative fiction, political thriller, mythology, romance and contemporary realism.

To describe it simply as a fantasy or science-fiction novel would therefore miss much of what Loko is attempting.

At its deepest level, The Bako of Zereshé is a novel about civilisation, memory, inheritance and identity. It asks what people inherit from those who came before them and how that inheritance shapes their understanding of themselves and their society.

It also asks what happens when a society’s mythology is not merely a collection of old stories but an active force within its political and social life.

From a Prisoner of the Ancient World to a Young Journalist

Loko establishes this ambition almost immediately.

The novel opens with an imprisoned primordial being whose betrayal by his own kin is connected to humanity’s descent into violence. The opening carries a distinctly mythic quality, suggesting a world in which human conflict and supernatural forces are intertwined.

Then the narrative makes a dramatic transition.

The reader encounters Jeremy Fletcher, a young BBC journalist living in London. His life initially appears far removed from the cosmic struggle introduced at the beginning of the novel.

Yet Jeremy is not simply a convenient protagonist. His dissatisfaction with his privileged upbringing, his complicated relationship with his mother, his concern for his incapacitated father and his desire to become a meaningful journalist give him an emotional foundation.

He wants a story that matters.

He gets one in circumstances he could never have imagined.

An assignment involving a Boko Haram kidnapping in northeastern Nigeria sends him towards a journey that ends with his plane crashing over an unmapped territory.

Jeremy subsequently awakens in Zereshé, a hidden nation populated by the “children of the sun”.

There, magic, politics, religion and history operate according to rules unfamiliar to him.

He is also a bako — a foreigner whose arrival carries enormous significance.

Zereshé Is More Than a Fantasy Kingdom

One of the novel’s most significant strengths lies in the way Loko constructs Zereshé.

The country does not exist merely as an exotic setting waiting for an outsider to discover it.

It is a functioning society with political disagreements, economic problems, historical trauma and competing visions of its future.

The treasury has suffered under an oligarchic family that controls the mines. A prime minister compromises some principles to preserve the political power needed to pursue other objectives. Citizens disagree over whether opening the country’s borders would create opportunities or expose them to greater danger.

These conflicts make Zereshé recognisable.

Its people may possess supernatural abilities, but they remain susceptible to familiar human weaknesses: greed, fear, ambition, prejudice, political calculation and the desire to control resources.

This is important because Loko avoids constructing an imaginary African society as either a utopia or a primitive world waiting for outside intervention.

Instead, Zereshé has its own contradictions.

The Memory of Persecution

Perhaps the most revealing element of the fictional country’s history is the fate of the aether-commanders.

In 1916, an entire caste of magic-users was destroyed by their own countrymen because of a fear that later proved unfounded.

Loko does not make this historical episode the entire centre of the novel. Yet its presence carries considerable thematic weight.

The people who built a sanctuary to escape persecution could themselves become persecutors.

That contradiction introduces an important idea into the novel: civilisation does not eliminate human fear and prejudice.

Neither does possessing a sophisticated culture or supernatural power automatically make a society morally superior.

The lesson is familiar beyond fiction.

Societies often remember the injustices inflicted upon them while forgetting the injustices they have inflicted on others.

African Cosmology as Narrative Architecture

This is where The Bako of Zereshé becomes particularly interesting within contemporary African speculative literature.

African mythology in speculative fiction sometimes appears as decoration. Writers can reproduce the visual language of African spirituality while retaining a narrative structure built largely around Western assumptions.

Loko attempts something different.

In The Bako of Zereshé, questions of ancestry, communal memory, spiritual responsibility and historical continuity influence the actual architecture of the story.

The supernatural does not simply interrupt everyday reality.

It belongs to reality.

That distinction gives the novel much of its intellectual identity.

The gods, magical institutions, ancient orders and spiritual hierarchies are not merely spectacles. They form part of the philosophical world inhabited by the characters.

A World That Reveals Itself Slowly

Loko also avoids overwhelming the reader with endless explanations.

The mythology of Zereshé emerges gradually.

Ancient institutions, forgotten histories and supernatural structures become clearer through conversations, relationships and events rather than through lengthy blocks of exposition.

As a result, the fictional world feels discovered rather than artificially assembled.

That approach also creates some of the novel’s most memorable visual moments.

Underground cavalry mounts emerge from the sand in bronze armour. Teleportation exists as an almost ordinary social skill. A wedding eventually develops into something resembling an apotheosis.

These moments demonstrate Loko’s willingness to build a fantasy universe on an ambitious scale.

The Cost of Taking Time

The novel’s principal challenge is its pace.

The Bako of Zereshé is not a book that constantly rushes from one major event to another. It allows conversations, descriptions and world-building to breathe.

For readers accustomed to rapid-fire fantasy, that approach may occasionally feel slow.

Yet the slower rhythm also produces one of the novel’s pleasures.

Details introduced early can acquire new meanings much later. Characters who initially appear peripheral can become central. Apparently casual remarks can return with unexpected significance.

The reader’s reward is therefore not simply the discovery of what happens next.

It is the recognition of how carefully the story has been constructed.

A Bridge Between Worlds

Ultimately, The Bako of Zereshé is an ambitious attempt to place African philosophical ideas at the centre of speculative storytelling.

It is a novel about a young journalist’s extraordinary journey, but it is also about inheritance, civilisation, political power, historical memory and the consequences of forgetting.

Its greatest achievement may be its refusal to treat African cosmology as an exotic addition to a conventional fantasy structure.

Instead, Loko makes it part of the foundation.

For adventurous readers, young adults, lovers of mythology and audiences interested in African speculative fiction, the novel offers a substantial journey.

More importantly, it invites a larger question: what might speculative fiction look like when African philosophies do not merely appear inside the story, but help determine the rules by which the story’s world operates?

That is the question The Bako of Zereshé leaves behind long after the final page.