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Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on.

These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). Other strong moments in this relentlessly honest narrative recount failed love (“he was the only one I regret being too broken for”), the shame of not being the immigrant success her parents had hoped for, and the quest for wholeness amid a cornucopia of medications targeting a long list of troubles that she expresses simply: “I don’t feel good."ĭeep truths underlie this fragmented, compelling narrative, which leaves readers wishing only the best for its harrowed author. One of the most affecting parts of the book is a simple diarylike reconstruction of a long day that began and ended with an airplane flight, a day of sleeplessness, hunger, and worry (“this doesn’t happen to normal people”). Depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety proved to be formidable opponents, isolation a constant even surrounded by millions of people. Little things proved overwhelming: the discovery, for instance, that “the twins from my favorite movie, The Parent Trap, were actually one person.” If the distance from Nigeria to Oklahoma was great, the leap to adulthood in New York was greater. Things were kept from her, familial facts were forgotten, genealogies erased, and unpleasant truths swept aside. What she does know is that she doesn’t know.

“I need to prove to you that I didn’t enter the world broken,” she writes before admitting the paucity of fact in a whirl of impressions and sensations. “The trick to lying,” she writes, “is to tell people that you’re a bad liar because then they’ll believe what you say.” What she has to say is sometimes heartbreaking, as she recounts a search for reliable memories when she has so few of them. “Imagine you don’t fit anywhere, not even in your own head”: A Nigerian immigrant and debut author writes of mental illness and its staggering challenges.Ĭatapult contributing editor Ikpi opens with the suggestion that the fractured memories to follow in her memoir may or may not be true.