This paper aims to analyse Helon Habila’s Oil on Water through the framework of literary pragmatics which deals with the production and interpretation of texts. In order to highlight the inner thoughts and feelings of the writer through the utterances of his characters, the article focuses on the different types of voice in the novel. The corpus under study has been sampled purposively and studied through a qualitative approach. The analyses reveal that categories of voices such as voice mash, voice trash and voice crash are used to project the views of the author, including his perceptions, feelings and beliefs. The study concludes that these linguistic items have made it easy to understand Habila’s perspectives in his literary artifact.