Everytime we pick up a book especially from black authors, what may attract us is the cover art before the fascination of how articulated the storyline becomes. Overseeing The Strange Man by Amo Djaleto. Which portrays the story of old Mensa, an esteemed member of a local community in Gold Coast (modern day Ghana); essentially recorded his boyhood as a tyke. Caught frequently in trouble, Mensa was sent away to study. Uncovering the corruption at these schools, left old Mensa with little regret.
As a civil servant, he sets about building a reputation as a man of standing. Many people withstood his grace. But his greatest problems emerged from his own households, especially when his beautiful daughter became a monument in local issues. Since this coverage there’s never been another African author to my record that tells it in a cultural capacity— every black writer desires to romance the western society for fame.
However, Xavier Ndukwe has been galvanised to retry this mechanism in story telling. And the cover art— finds expression in a different way. The cover was the first story he told. Its visual geometry leans towards the mathematical configuration, whose symmetry and precision reflects the obsessions of the characters we are about to meet. Yet the subdued tones suggest shadows — not quite darkness, but the kind of grey area in which moral choices festers into decay. It is, in many ways, the book distilled through intellect, power, and the unseen forces that guide human destiny.
From the very first chapter, we meet Gaston, the prodigy who becomes both the beating heart and the fragile conscience of the story. As we know it Ndukwe opens not with a gentle exposition, rather by Gaston already standing before a University audience, a ten-year-old child effortlessly holding the attention of seasoned professors.
In his words: “It was nothing new to him to have people look at him with so much attention, waiting to hear what he had to say about anything. In all his ten years of life, he could not remember a time when he did not have an answer or anything to say.”
As the character continues, you’d appreciate the eloquence of Xavier Ndukwe who told the story of Gaston—He speaks of hieroglyphs, creation theories, and the limitations of science, all from his stance; we understand his gift that brilliance itself may be a burden. The scenes were unsettling, not because Gaston is unbelievable, but because he was so recognisable and people had become used to his presence. Africa has long produced young minds celebrated for their extraordinary talents — children balancing the weight of expectation and isolation. In Gaston, we see both promise and precarity.
In Page 129, “Gaston dropped the tablet in his hands. “The data suggests that if we introduce a hybrid strain with an adaptive cellular response, we might be able to reduce environmental resistance,” he said smoothly. “But that means reworking the genetic sequencing from the ground up.”
But brilliance alone could not shield him. When a strange figure in the audience, bald and marked with a cryptic tattoo, shadows Gaston’s family, we sense the book’s pulse of foreboding. Ndukwe plays the scene without melodrama, letting unease slip quietly into the narrative and this is where readers may fall off from the start however as you read through and encounter pages like 129, you’d start to pick a sort of mystery alluring your mind.
What followed one of the most cinematic sequences in the novel was the flight home, the creeping turbulence, the masks dropping, the fire breaking out in the cabin. The boy’s mother throwing her body over his. His father shielding them both in vain. It is visceral, tragic, and in its aftermath, the novel shifts irrevocably from intellectual curiosity to survival. This is much like an African instance— life seem to be a temple run. Just alike to old Mensa in The Strange Man.
The crash is not merely a spectacle, this book would pass as a good 7.5 rating movie on Rotten Tomatoes. It functions as Gaston’s crucible, the defining trauma that stripped him of parents and thrusted him into the care of Jason Hendricks, a well-meaning tutor who saw both genius and danger in his ward. In the hushed scenes of mourning and guardianship, we witness Ndukwe’s skill at capturing grief in slow details like the emptiness of a house filled with his father’s books, the brittle politeness of funeral visitors, the cruel absurdity of promises made and broken by adults who vanish when emotion subsides.
His words were “Jason adjusted his glasses, the gentle hum of the car’s engine filling the silence as they drove home from the cemetery. In the rear-view mirror, he could see Gaston sitting motionless, his gaze fixed on the passing scenery. The boy’s stillness unnerved him. Gaston had always been a child of sharp words and probing questions, but today, he seemed almost hollow, a fragile shell containing a storm of grief.”
It is here that Treftax enters, not only as an institution but as the novel’s great metaphor. At first glance, it is an academy for the gifted — laboratories, lecture halls, innovation hubs. But beneath its glass walls lies something darker: the Special Talent Recognition and Acquisition Unit, a machine that scours the globe for brilliance, not to nurture it but to harness it.
Gaston was not invited to join; he was pursued, monitored, and eventually folded into a system his father once rejected. Ndukwe’s depiction of Treftax was unnervingly precise. We see its reach in African villages, where prodigies are plucked from obscurity. We see its glossy brochures promising education and opportunity, and we hear its boardroom whispers of profit and control. Treftax is, in essence, a parable of elite power: an institution that offers salvation while feeding on its disciples.
Within its corridors, Gaston met Alex, a girl whose gift with numbers is as much survival mechanism as talent. Their bond is one of the book’s most human achievements. Together they navigate loyalty, betrayal, and the moral murkiness of serving an institution that shapes global events. Ndukwe allows them to carry both their trauma and their brilliance, never letting either quality define them entirely. Their friendship at times tentative, other times fierce; becomes the reader’s compass in a story otherwise brimming with manipulation.
Thematically, The Unassuming Vector is restless. It moves through survival and resilience, the cost of being exceptional, the ethics of ambition, and the thin line between innovation and exploitation. Its global sweep from Edinburgh to American campuses, from secretive boardrooms to African communities lit by Treftax solar grids — feels deliberate. Ndukwe is reminding us that African storytelling cannot be confined to narrow geographies; it has always been global, always concerned with how the lives of individuals intersect with the machinery of power.
What distinguishes this debut, however, is Ndukwe’s voice. With a background in pharmacy, he writes with a scientific clarity that sharpens rather than flattens his prose. This has sort of pushed it to a Sci-Fic audience which is somewhat in crazy demands. Scenes are cleanly rendered, with precise details that its lovers would ravage over. Yet he is not afraid of silence; moments of grief are given space, characters were allowed to breathe which all comes natural.
The combination is rare yet practical. Also seems like a story one can encounter anywhere. A thriller that can grip with urgency while also pausing long enough for philosophical reflection.
By its final chapters, The Unassuming Vector has established itself not just as a story of one boy’s survival, but as a reflection on the systems that decide whose gifts are celebrated, whose are exploited, and at what cost? In Gaston’s journey we find tapestries of African histories, rich and daring— like my American friends would say; “a knack” of brilliance extracted from empires, with talents commodified by institutions that promise salvation while demanding loyalty.
For a debut, this is a startling achievement. It sits comfortably alongside contemporary African literature that insists on both narrative pleasure and political weight. Like Adichie, Ndukwe understands the persona as political. Like Ngũgĩ, he recognises the danger of institutions that demand obedience. And as Amu Djeleto he battles behind the scenes of life and desires. Yet the lane is his own — a hybrid of thriller, coming-of-age tale, and philosophical novel.
The Unassuming Vector is a book that demands to be read not only for its story but for its resonance. It speaks to a world where power hides behind glass buildings and smiling emissaries, where trauma collides with ambition, and where the future often rests on the unassuming shoulders of those who never asked for the burden. This novel demands a relaxed mind to enjoy.
However, I wish the author had adapted many local African names like the African laureates yearning to preserve its heritage. I understand he desired to adapt western names to make it more inclusive and interesting. I have found that the westerners are now more curious in black stories. When I attend festivals, interact with Art directors, or even perform— the thing that sells me or my stories is how naturally African it is.
Another thing effective is the best selling stories on the market at present are African, Caribbean or anything black. Just dense, ambitious, and unapologetically bold. Hopefully, in his next release Ndukwe’s fingers would minister to us a story that retains African names.
