Product Description
In this new book developed from the prestigious Reith Lectures, Nobel Prize—winning author Wole Soyinka, a courageous advocate for human rights around the world, considers fear as the dominant theme in world politics.

Decades ago, the idea of collective fear had a tangible face: the atom bomb. Today our shared anxiety has become far more complex and insidious, arising from tyranny, terrorism, and the invisible power of the “quasi state.” As Wole Soyinka suggests, the climate of fear that has enveloped the world was sparked long before September 11, 2001.

Rather, it can be traced to 1989, when a passenger plane was brought down by terrorists over the Republic of Niger. From Niger to lower Manhattan to Madrid, this invisible threat has erased distinctions between citizens and soldiers; we’re all potential targets now.

In this seminal work, Soyinka explores the implications of this climate of fear: the conflict between power and freedom, the motives behind unthinkable acts of violence, and the meaning of human dignity. Fascinating and disturbing, Climate of Fear is a brilliant and defining work for our age. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

School saver
My son needed this book for school and with the price and quick delivery Amazon comes through again.

Must-Reading for ANYONE
Wole Soyinka's insight into human behavior and our social interactions is truly astounding.Thank you, Mr. Soyinka!!!I look forward to reading and learning more from your work. ... Read more

Product Description
The first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as a political activist of prodigious energies, Wole Soyinka now follows his modern classic Ake: The Years of Childhood with an equally important chronicle of his turbulent life as an adult in (and in exile from) his beloved, beleaguered homeland.
In the tough, humane, and lyrical language that has typified his plays and novels, Soyinka captures the indomitable spirit of Nigeria itself by bringing to life the friends and family who bolstered and inspired him, and by describing the pioneering theater works that defied censure and tradition. Soyinka not only recounts his exile and the terrible reign of General Sani Abacha, but shares vivid memories and playful anecdotes–including his improbable friendship with a prominent Nigerian businessman and the time he smuggled a frozen wildcat into America so that his students could experience a proper Nigerian barbecue.
More than a major figure in the world of literature, Wole Soyinka is a courageous voice for human rights, democracy, and freedom. You Must Set Forth at Dawn is an intimate chronicle of his thrilling public life, a meditation on justice and tyranny, and a mesmerizing testament to a ravaged yet hopeful land.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

A good read from the literary genius
For those who have a fixed mindset that Professor's books are tough read, then you might skip this. It not a difficult read but he expounds his struggle to fix a nation in his own corner and how he carried his influence throughout his adulthood. As a Nigerian with huge respect for his person, Wole Soyinka explains his web of influence with emphasis on Femi Johnson (a close friend), his sojourns in civil war, brazil and his Nobel prize. His place in saving the Nigerian project and how he tried to rescue it from psychpaths. He use of language was never mild on military dictators and his use of words is compelling.To describe him as pompous seems self serving, our avatar is telling his story. A good read....try it with much patience

Memoir of a African writer, crusader, and Nobel winner
Memoir - a written record of a usually famous person's own life and experiences.

I present the following as a rebuttal to the often cited criticism found among these reviews.When one reads a memoir, one should expect the author to write of his own thoughts, feelings and experiences.For a hundred pages, or so, I found W.S. writing about himself a bit off-putting, however, by the end of the book I had come to like, admire, and respect him.

This is a book about a highly accomplished African and the events that defined him in the eyes of the world.His must be one of the most positive stories to come out of Africa in the 20th century.The prominent role he played in the political history of Nigeria is quite incredible.It is hard to imagine a writer/playwright/poet and social critic having a similar impact in the U.S.A.

This is also a history of post-independence Nigeria, albeit from the somewhat narrow perspective of W.S.While the book may lack the scope of a dedicated, general history, it does show events from a very personal perspective.You almost feel as if you are a fly on the wall as W.S. maneuvers in the Nigerian political arena.

I DISAGREE
I disagree with all those who think this is an exercise, by the author, in self aggrandisement and hubris.Far from it, this is an old man telling the story, or some stories, of the often turbulent and privilegedlife he has lived.To say the book is boring is an unfair comment by those who may seem threatened by Soyinka's word prowess.

I have enjoyed all Soyinka's prose more than his poetry, and even drama( the beatification of area boy comes to mind)in some cases.However,I have always seen it as a necessity to arm oneself with a dictionary when attempting a Soyinka work.He makes no apologies for his use of hifaluting words; the imagery invokedat times is most beautiful and at others , it is lost on the reader as it is totally incomprehensible.In that respect, I do sympathise with a lot of readers.I too have struggled to grasp certain concepts, and to undertsand his use of certain terms.Having said this, my diction and imaginationhave become the better for it.

This book is well written, but there is a lack ofcoherence in the chapters -one idea set forth in one area is so far removed from its predecessor or successor.Also, a lot of what he has written has been mentioned, allbeit, cursorily, in his other works-The Man Died, Ibadan:The Penkelemes Years.Did he really need to rehash the same things? Maybe and maybe not. A lot of people who are not too familiar with the development of Nigeria may not readily appreciate the social dynamics and certain characters mentioned in the book. I guess I have had the (dis)honour of having lived in some of the turbulent times and am familiar with a lot of the villains as told through Soyinka's eyes.I may have been a child in the eighties, but felt the brunt of the Buhari-Idiagbon regime, the corruption of the Babangida era, and the tyranny of Sani Abacha.I could readily identify with what the author what saying.Perhaps that is why some others may find it difficult to appreciate that part of a country's history;the linguistic sophistication does not help matters either.


There were passages of sheer beauty, and there you seeSoyinka excel in his use of vocabulary.Compared to his other works, I found I did not have to consult my dictionary as often.I suspect it is an improvement in my diction and not the author becoming soft.

Overall, I think if one were to take up the challenge of reading the book there is some reward; it may be in learning new words, grasping new concepts and ways of presenting ideas. More importantly, others who have never been to, or been exposed to, Nigeria, will get to know its beauty,its people, the decimation and ruination of its collective psyche by past leaders, and how the inchoate democracy is striving to reclaim that lost glory.

Skip this one
What the author lacks in humility he makes up for with pomposity and self-aggrandizment.Yes he does track political events in Nigeria in the 60's and yes he does have some sobering and slightly amusing anecdotes.But trying to wade through the wordiness to get to a kernel of information is maddening.Working one's way through the ego and self-centeredness is hardly worth the slog.Skip it and go on to something else unless you're the type that likes to drive slivers under your own fingernails.

Bor-ring!!!
This has to be one of the worst books I've ever read...or almost read.If you enjoy a sentence that's more than a page long, you just may like it though.The author is so puffed up it's as if he's gazing at himself in a mirror, strutting his tail feathers for all to see.Our book club felt the same. ... Read more

Product Description
The events that led up to dissident writer Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution on November 10, 1995, mark Nigeria's decline from a post-colonial success story to its current military dictatorship. Few writers have been more outspoken in decrying and lamenting this decline than Nobel Prize laureate and Nigerian exile Wole Soyinka.

In The Open Sore of a Continent, Soyinka, whose own Nigerian passport was confiscated by General Abacha in 1994, explores the history and future of Nigeria in a compelling jeremiad that is as intense as it is provocative, learned, and wide-ranging. He deftly explains the shifting dramatis personae of Nigerian history and politics to Westerners unfamiliar with the players and the process, tracing the growth of Nigeria as a player in the world economy.And, in the process of elucidating the Nigerian crisis, Soyinka opens readers to the broader questions of nationhood, identity, and the general state of African culture and politics at the end of the twentieth century. Here are a range of issues that investigate the interaction of peoples who have been shaped by the clash of cultures: nationalism, power, corruption, violence, and the enduring legacy of colonialism. Soyinka concludes with a resounding call for the global community to address the issue of nationhood to prevent further religious tyrannies and calls for ethnic purity of the sort that have turned Algeria, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sri Lanka into killing fields.

An important and timely volume, The Open Sore of a Continent is required reading for anyone who cares about Africa, human rights, and the future of the global village.Amazon.com Review
Ravaged by the most brutal dictatorship in its history, Nigeria is ata crossroads. While General Abacha's regime generates the very chaos itclaims to be controlling, the country's institutions and moral fiber aredisintegrating. Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka believes Nigeria'sinvent-from-the-top government is to blame. With each new cabinet, thegovernment reinvents itself, leaving the country without purpose ordirection. As the country doubles its population every 22 years, the militarymay become even more repressive. Soyinka believes that Nigerians are"primed for a campaign of comprehensive civil disobedience," andoffers an ethical map to guide the country out of despair. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Politics and dictators in Nigeria.
This is a short book, but very difficult to read.This is surprising since the author has a Nobel prize for literature.It is also rather dated.The author writes about his feelings after the military dictator Abacha annulled the election of June, 1993.Several months later, Abacha hanged another noted author.Soyinka writes about the wasted life of Nigeria under the various military dictators.He predicts that if the military dictatorships continue, Nigeria will break up into pieces, and there will be nothing left to argue over.He also details the military and political kleptocracy that has taken over Nigeria since independence.Things have gone to the worst state imaginable, and only democracy will cure this.
I found myself laughing at some points in this book because the author has a way of detailing how he feels about the military dictators who have run his country.He makes them out as idiots.
The author uses complex language and assumes the reader has some knowledge of Nigerian politics.Therefore this book is not for the lay reader.A difficult read.

Thought Provoking
I read the book with the goal of learning more about Nigeria and its people. Obviously this book is from a very biased source, however, in reading of the horrors in his native land his bias is understandble and only logical. There is a lot of pathos, intense emotions in his description of the crisis in Nigeria. As a scholar/journalist I like to hear all sides of a complex issue so I feel like I've heard one perspective from a first-hand witness after having read this book.

As some of the other reviewers have pointed out, unless one is familiar with the key players in Nigerian politics it is difficult to grasp totally what is being discussed. Also, since the book is composed of various presentations given elsewhere it lacks a certain amount of cohesion.

With that aside, I feel like I know a little more about the country after having read it. The book isn't long. As I read more I hope to understand more of what is taking place in that country. I want to be part of an informed public that can help do something about the plight of victims of dictators.

Appropriately disturbing and illuminating
Soyinka wastes no words. In this book, based on a series of lectures, he argues that the ruthlessness of the military dictatorships that have ruled Nigeria for the past twenty years have deprived her of her very nationhood. At the very beginning, Soyinka asks the key question: "When is a nation?" He argues that Nigeria may be "a nation on the verge of extinction" - or rather a nation that was serverly stabbed with the annulment of the June 12 presidential elections, and is now slowly bleeding to death. This annulment by Babangida, dictator from 1985 - 1993, is the focal point for Soyinka's rage. Soyinka is a very strong proponent of democracy in Africa - especially in Nigeria, which he still believes could be a leader of the continent - and he views this annulment as a profound betrayal of national trust and of Nigeria's future. However, despite his anger and his bitterness at the injustices that have been Nigeria's fate since independence, Soyinka retains hope and faith in the people of Nigeria. He believes that repression and corruption cannot last forever - democracy and true nationhood, while difficult to attain, have not been forever lost to history.

While I found this book excellent, I would not recommend it to someone who was not already somewhat familiar with Nigerian political and cultural history over the last thirty years. Also, it is helpful if the reader is familiar either with Soyinka's work or with somewhat convoluted writing. Soyinka's ideas are well worth reading and stem from remarkable personal experiences, but, from point A to point B - he will not usually choose to draw a straight line. Reflective of Nigerian politics, and Nigeria as a whole, nothing is simple!

I hope other readers will learn as much from this book as I have. It has opened my eyes to what the newspaper articles simply leave out and has given me both more to be concerned and more to be hopeful about Nigeria.

The Sore of a Continent as rippled by an Individual
Wole Soyinka is one of the foremost African literary giant of modern times. He has an intellectual stature that seems to diminish his critiques.To Wole's credit this book ranks among one of his best work- this is simplybecause it is readable. The reduction of noisy elements by its simplicityof expression makes it one of his finest piece to date, at least I wasspared the pain of reading the Kongi King without a dictionary by my side.The book- understandably like his later work to date- The Burden of Memory,The Muse of Forgiveness- is the prooduct of lectures put together, henceone can forgive its lack of structural cohesion. Nonetheless, Soyinkabrings to the fore the African crises of leadership and the dearth ofcritical appraisal of existential situation by African leaders. In as muchas the text depicts examples it preoccupied itself with the Nigeriansituation. Unfortunately, therefore, Soyinka risks tying the Africandestiny with the Nigerian fate- the totality of the African situation ismuch more multilateral than the unilateral reference to a singular polityNigeria. As if this is a a new pattern for the Kongi King he keeps limitinghimself to the extent that even the Nigerian situation was tied to the fateof his Yoruba nationality- ethnic group. This is not surprising since theKongi Warrior has been sliding narrower from that of being an internationalfigure to one preoccupied with being a national hero( a national roadsafety marshall) and now a nationality figurine. Our marshall therefore hastaken a course that simplistically narrows the whole issues that affectsAfrica to particular issues that affects him. Unfortunately, the Kongi herois still speaking and relating factual mattter, and so should not be takenlightly. The problem with Africa is one of political and economicleadership-a bedevilled breed of satanic monster that do not want to seesmiles on the face of the citizenry. It is in this domain that the KongiChief should be better understood. Yes! His limitation of African issues toNigerian examples and ordered toward his Yoruba nationality cause is alsotheatrical. As a dramaturgist he understands that the whole world can be atheatre but that an effective drama has to be limited to a spatial confineto produce impact. It is on such note that the Kongi chief points to thenegative imagery of defective political machinery in Africa as gross and incritical need of resolution. It is this fact that makes this work- The OpenSore of a Continent- very fascinating for herein Soyinka combines factswith his dramatic humour for the sake of effect. While one may not totallyagree with some of Soyinka's reasoning or conclusions one cannot but wavehis thoughts aside.His vision is deep and profound. This work is a must forall who want to understand the critical dearth of development- political,economic and social- that affects and afflicts the soul of most- if notall- African nations today. It is a must to read this book, yet thejudgement remains with the reader. But we must see how much we can pull outfrom the mustache of this singular revolutionary- the Poetic and dramaticdemocratic soldier. Happy Reading!

mmmmm, enlightening ?
WS partisan whipping of the Northern Hegemony provides the outside world with an eloquent morsel of that which has become a tiresome bleating of a fraught people with no real notion of being. Interogatingnationhood usingNigeria's artificiality seems the obvious approach However one must alsorealise thatgovernance in all it's disguises reflects a mutuality howeverperverse. Nigeria's insanitycannot be a consequence of a 'sinister selfperpetuating hegemony', but of a collective effort by rulers and ruled tobankrupt their existence. It points to an incoherence which reaches beyondthe presented structures and nestles within a muddled culture construct insearch of a direction.

One must thank WS for presenting what must beconsumed as 'faction' for in its whole, it is illuminating. However itcannot be termed as objective, as WS seems to represents interests whoseagenda conflicts with the established order or does he? Does he really meanwhat he says? The collective of Nigeria must experience natural fluxhowever extreme and painful, we shall not implode or explode . Been there,Done that, Still here! ... Read more

Product Description
Winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, this Nigerian poet, playwright, and novelist writes of the rich cultural traditions as well as the hopes and frustrations of black Africa.This two-volume collection of his plays includes A Dance of the Forests, The Swamp Dwellers, The Strong Breed, The Road, and The Bacchae of Euripides in the first volume, and The Lion and the Jewel, Kongi's Harvest, The Trials of Brother Jero, Jero's Metamorphosis, and Madmen and Specialists in the second volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Splendid
This, Volume 1 of the collected plays by Nigerian-born Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, contains, The Dance of the Forests, The Swamp Dwellers, The Strong Breed, The Road, and The Bacchae of Euripides (Soyinka's translation), but not The Lion and the Jewel, et al., as the Book Description by Amazon above mistakenly has it.Those plays are contained in Volume 2.

For this review I want to focus on The Road which Soyinka wrote in 1965.It is a quasi-realistic play which incorporates elements from the theater of the absurd.It is a comedy of sorts, not exactly a comedie noire, as the French say, but with similar satirical intent.It is also a deeply symbolic play.

The action comprises a single day, from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.The scene is a road-side shack presumably in Nigeria with a church close by, parts of which are also on stage.Part of the shack is a used parts store, and there is a dilapidated "mammy waggon" downstage and to the side opposite the church.

The central character is the PROFESSOR who stands for civilization and literacy.He has the power of the Word, and this power sustains him above his fellows.The PROFESSOR uses his literacy to forge documents such as driver's licenses.This too is part of his power.He is a contradictory character, and the Word is slippery and is not always an embodiment of the truth.The PROFESSOR stands in opposition to the Church and its Bishop.

SAMSON is the tout for the "No Danger, No Delay" lorry service.A tout is one who finds customers for the company, who seats them and maybe carries their luggage and flatters them.SAMSON is a practical man.

KOTONU is a driver who works with SAMSON.SALUBI is a driver trainee, a superstitious man.MURANO, whom Soyinka says represents the suspension of death, is a mute and personal servant to the PROFESSOR.

PARTICULARS JOE is a cop who always wants the "particulars" of the case.He apparently lives as much on the bribes he receives as he does on his salary.SAY TOKYO KID is the leader of the thugs and a driver.

The hangers-on and such serve as a musical and dancing chorus throughout the play.They sing dirges and act out tribal dances sometimes using the Mask which may hide the god of death, or as Soyinka has it, the Mask represents "a religious cult of flesh dissolution."Throughout there are references to Orgun, the tribal god of iron and war.During the Festival of the Drivers, there is the "Feast of Orgun, the Dog-eater" with the idea that the Road eats dogs that get in the way of the wheels of the lorries.

The characters in the play make their living from the road and its traffic.Some of them even chase after accidents and remove things of value from the vehicles--even the clothes of the dead--and sell them in the "Care of Accident Supply Store."

The central element is the road of course, the road like a river that runs through their lives and through their civilization, a road that lies flat and then, like a coiled snake, snaps up and brings to death by accident those who travel on its back.The road is also that which transforms the forest, as they take its timber, into the hard concrete and asphalt of the city.It is the road that transforms the life of the tribesman into that of the city dweller.One might compare the Road to the Way of the Taoists, but of course here the road is actively malicious.In a sense then this play is a religious allegory with the tension contained between the Road and the Word.

Soyinka's dialogue is in English with some Pidgin departures and with some vocabulary from the Yoruba language mixed in.Soyinka has a master's ear and an artist's touch with language.He has the characters at times talking past one another, each with his own concern, as in an absurdist play, and at other times he has them mouthing words of philosophic import.It is especially the PROFESSOR who waxes philosophical.He is a bit of a cynic who exclaims at one point, "Have you sold your soul for money? You lie like a prophet."He adds, "Truth?Truth? Truth my friend is scum risen on the froth of wine" reminding me of Pontius Pilate whom Sir Francis Bacon famously has asking, "What is truth?" and not staying for an answer.

PARTICULARS JOE, who was once a soldier, can also be philosophical, sometimes in an ironic way as when he declares "It is peaceful to fight a war which one does not understand, to kill human beings who never seduced your wife or poisoned your water."And there are jokes and witty sayings which Soyinka springs upon us by surprise from time to time.A nice exchange begins when PARTICULARS JOE pockets a coin that belongs to SAMSON that he finds in a crack on the floor:

SAMSON: That happens to be mine.

JOE [blandly]: That's O.K. Natural mistake on my part.Money has been left for me in more unlikely places believe me.

SAMSON: Well at least wait until I am back on the road before you collect tolls.

This inspires the PROFESSOR to ask JOE, How is the criminal world my friend?

JOE: More lucrative every day Professor.

PROFESSOR: Not for the criminal I trust.

JOE (with unintentional irony I presume): Oh no sir.That would only corrupt them.

One sees the influence of such absurdist playwrights as Samuel Beckett, Bertold Brecht and Eugene Ionesco in this play, but I believe Soyinka is both more realistic and funnier.He spent some part of his formative years in London where he was educated and worked in the theatre and where his first plays were produced.His mastery of the elements of the theater is obvious even from reading just this one play.I am looking forward to exploring more of Soyinka's work.

A Dance of the Forests
Although I was introduced to this book because of an english assignment, I became entranced by the book by the first 10 pages.And although it is confusing at times, and a teacher explaining the story as you go along is asignifigant help, the lyrical blend of Western experimentalism and Africanfolk tradition is quite inebriating.If you are at all interested inAfrican folk lore, this play is a must read for you.Wole Soyinka is oneof the most respected play writers in all of Africa, and this is one of hisbest works. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review
When he was 4 years old, spurred by insatiable curiosity and the beat of a marching drum, Wole Soyinka slipped silently through the gate of his parents' yard and followed a police band to a distant village. This was his first journey beyond Aké, Nigeria, and reading his account is akin to witnessing a child's epiphany:

The parsonage wall had vanished forever but it no longer mattered. Those token bits and pieces of Aké which had entered our home on occasions, or which gave off hints of their nature in those Sunday encounters at church, were beginning to emerge in their proper shapes and sizes.

He returned, perched upon the handlebars of a policeman's bicycle, "markedly different from whatever I was before the march." The reader's horizons feel similarly expanded after finishing this astonishing book.

Nobel laureate Soyinka is a prolific playwright, poet, novelist, and critic, but seems to have found his purest voice as an autobiographer. Aké: The Years of Childhood is a memoir of stunning beauty, humor, and perception--a lyrical account of one boy's attempt to grasp the often irrational and hypocritical world of adults that equally repels and seduces him. Soyinka elevates brief anecdotes into history lessons, conversations into morality plays, memories into awakenings. Various cultures, religions, and languages mingled freely in the Aké of his youth, fostering endless contradictions and personalized hybrids, particularly when it comes to religion. Christian teachings, the wisdom of the ogboni, or ruling elders, and the power of ancestral spirits--who alternately terrify and inspire him--all carried equal metaphysical weight. Surrounded by such a collage, he notes that "God had a habit of either not answering one's prayers at all, or answering them in a way that was not straightforward."

In writing from a child's perspective, Soyinka expresses youthful idealism and unfiltered honesty while escaping the adult snares of cynicism and intolerance. His stinging indictment of colonialism takes on added power owing to the elegance of his attack. He also spears Nigeria's increasing Westernization, its movement toward modernity and materialism, as he describes his beloved village markets deteriorating from a "procession of magicians" to rows of "fantasy stores lit by neon and batteries of coloured bulbs" where the "blare of motor-horns compete with a high-decibel outpouring of rock and funk and punk and other thunk-thunk from lands of instant-culture heroes."

The book closes with an 11-year-old Soyinka preparing to enroll in a government college, declaring it "time to commence the mental shifts for admittance to yet another irrational world of adults and their discipline." Aké is an eloquent testament to the wisdom of youth. --Shawn Carkonen ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

my wife's country
Dear folks,

As you could understand this is about my wife's country. My wife is Edo. Wole Soyinka is Yoruba, a tribe originally coming from the Edo tribe (Edo State)
This book, though written many years ago, gives inside information about daily life in Nigeria. Wole Soyinka as well as Ben Okri (The Famished Road, Infinite Richess and Songs of Enchantment) describe the Nigerian society (especially the family relations) with a loving brush).
I have been in Nigeria several times, naturally, and they say that when you go to Africa, you plant a seed. And that is truly so.
If you want to know more about daily life read Soyinka's and Okri's books.

Hans Pootjes

Half-Half
I bought two books in this title, one for myself and one shipped to my friend.My book arrived pretty early in the promised span of time, but my friends book came at the last day of the promised dates.We were worried that it will never come or that it got lost in the mail.But thankfully it did arrived as promised.

Sentenced to Death!
All I knew about Wole Soyinka, before reading Aké, was that he was sentenced to be executed in 1997 by the Nigerian military dictator Sani Abacha. I remember the international clamor. I signed the petitions. But Nigerian politics is a painful subject for me, one I try to avoid, since a college classmate and close friend was killed in the Biafran civil war. Soyinka was and is a professor of comparative literature --currently teaching in southern California, according to the internet--who has been compelled by the atrocities of post-colonial Nigeria to protest and to take political stances that have earned him acclaim as well as put him in mortal danger. But his extended Yoruban family, as he reveals in his memoirs, had already become politically activist even in his childhood, participating in the struggles that ended British colonial rule.

"Aké" tells the story of Soyinka's childhood, from his earliest naive memories of his family until his admission, as an eleven-year-old among men, to the British-operated Government College where, to his disappointment, the boys are not allowed to wear shoes. Young Wole had just acquired his first shoes through a clever family stratagem. His stern, idolized father had forbidden shoes for children as a form of shameful "spoiling" overindulgence, but Wole is precociously cognizant that the prohibition of shoes at the Government College represent another motive, a subtle racist subordination. His preparation for enrollment coincides with the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima; the boy hears his politically active aunt denounce that heinous event as evidence of the inveterate racism of the White Man, and his impressive uncle Daodu, the principal of a Christian school, has deep misgivings about the 'training for submissive inferiority' offered by White teachers.

But that's racing to the end of the book. Most of "Aké" is a collage of memories of Wole's early boyhood in the Christian compound - the parsonage, church, and school - within the still 'pagan' village culture of Nigeria in the 1930s. It was a culture in swift transition, a syncretic melange of Christian teachings, ancestral 'superstitions', and modern 'knowledge'. Likewise a world of scarcely compatible technologies, ancient and new-fangled, and even less compatible social institutions, ceremonial scarification and mandatory prostration before tribal elders side by side with the authority structures of European church and school. Wole's closest family is clearly elite, as he naively perceives; they are educated Christians on salary, living in houses with gramophones and later radios, yet embedded still in pre-Christian, pre-technological village kinships.

Wole loved his childhood. He relished its diversities and incomprehensible contradictions. It's clear that he's reluctant to lose even a morsel of his early memories. That's the pleasure of reading Aké, to savour the boy's mystifications and mythifications, to share his incomprehension of "the irrational world of adults and their discipline." The adults of Wole's memory are colorful monsters, unpredictable, sometimes indulgent, often overbearing, but invariably loving and beloved. As an author, Soyinka convinces us of his childish perspective. We are as much overawed by his teacher father "Essay" and perplexed by his mother "The Wild Christian" as the boy himself. Only occasionally and with sharply-defined purpose does Soyinka step back from his memories to suggest a retrospective adult evaluation of events. Wole also loved his exotic world. He loved its tangy tastes and smells, its odd conflicts of tradition and intrusive modernity, its pace, its abundance; again he rarely steps back to behold that world from the perspective of his adulthood, to revisit Aké as it has become today, and when he does revisit, the transformation is too depressing to dwell upon. One has to celebrate the demise of overt colonialism, he suggests, but there's little reason to celebrate the humiliating deculturization and self-oppression of his people since.

John Leonard, a New York Times reviewer, is quoted on the back cover of Aké as wondering "What if V.S. Naipaul were a happy man?... What if Vladimir Nabokov had grown up in a small town in western Nigeria and decided that politics were not unworthy of him?" That comparison of Soyinka with two masters of memoir is not overstated; Soyinka belongs in such company. But a more apt comparison, in my opinion, would be with the French writer/filmmaker Marcel Pagnol, who so lusciously recorded his own childhood in his slightly-fictionalized memoirs "The Glory of My Father" and "The Chateau of My Mother". Both Wole and Marcel had schoolmaster fathers and powerfully influential uncles. Both grew up in villages just on the edge of the modernizing world. Marcel's boyhood was brushed into history by World War 1; Wole's youth was eventually washed away by the distant World War 2 and the immediate struggles of anti-colonialism which resulted from it. More important to the Reader, both Pagnol and Soyinka are masterful describers, veritable impressionist painters of the landscapes of their childhoods. Both give us food so succulent we taste it, birds we hear flapping and squawking, adult hands on our shoulders whose callouses we feel, same-age friends whose secrets we know intuitively. Both men lived childhoods of such rich intensity that we envy and adore their memories.

Good Book
The novel is quite good, however certain words and phrases do not add much meaning to the trend of what is going on; they are superflous. On the whole it it a good novel.

Heartwarming Childhood Memoir
I love African literature.It's beautiful and it's brilliant and not enough people are familiar with it (yet: I'm optimistic.There's tons of it out there and the many books I've read were great and well-received, so someday it'll catch on.It's scary how little people know about it: I meet people surprised that there even IS an African literature!!!).However, anyone who has read a lot of it knows that much of it is rather sad, which is to be expected considering much of Africa's colonial and post-colonial history.

However...THIS BOOK IS NOT SAD.It's filled with all the vitality, love, and humor of life itself.

Ake: The Years of Childhood is a hilarious, uproarious, touching story of the precocious young Wole (now a Nobel laureate in literature, deservedly so).Now, I don't often find books difficult but this book is a bit verbose at times but you have to stick with it because it's worth it.You will be rolling with laughter at Wole's adventures and you will grow to love his family.

Although most of the book is a joyous and humorous personal account of a Nigerian boy who grows up the son of the school principle around WWII, in an intelligent, colorful, and loving family, the ending of the book has some very interesting accounts of the Soyinka family's friendship with the Ransome-Kuti family (which produced the famous African musician Fela Kuti).

As part of the educated Yoruba elite in Africa, Wole's mother was friends with Kuti's mother and together they educated women, stood up to the colonists (in some of the best scenes in the book) and fought for female emancipation.This may come to a shock to those who know Fela Kuti's cultivated machismo, but these strong women are celebrated and assisted by the men in the village.African women had a unique position under colonialism in that they could stand up to colonial officials in a way African men could not have-British men (not always, but often) preferred not to use violence against women and saw that as part of their gentlemanly identity.Therefore, when

Mrs. Ransome-Kuti tells a colonial official who has ill treated her that "you were born but you were not bred" it is one of the most powerful moments in the book.

I can't recommend this book any more highly.Go get it right away!I promise you you won't regret it.This is the kind of book that makes you realize the power of reading: the power to open up a new world, a new culture, and feel you are part of it; the power to laugh along with the characters, to spend a few hours of your life delighted.It's an experience more than a book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is one of the best-known plays by Africa's major dramatist, Wole Soyinka. It is set in the Yoruba village of Ilunjinle. The main characters are Sidi (the Jewel), 'a true village belle' and Baroka (the Lion), the crafty and powerful Bale of the village, Lakunle, the young teacher, influenced by western ways, and Sadiku, the eldest of Baroka's wives. How the Lion hunts the Jewel is the theme of this ribald comedy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

old dog.....really?
the story is a cleverly written satire. it shows the avarice of the old guard in the country. despite the fact that baroka has everything anyone in the village could ever want, he desires more. he must have the jewel at all cost and employs trickery to get Sidi into his arms. most of Soyinka's plays have a bit of a sting and i imagine it gets the message across to the ones that they are intended to reach.

Yeah, Wole Soyinka makes us proud!
I read this book as a compulsory read for all Junior Secondary 3 students way back in Nigeria, and I and my friends had fun with it. You know discussing the plots and characters for tests and exams was fun.

The book centres around a young maiden, Sidi. What is really memorable about the book is that she was trying to act all smart and she got her fingers badly burnt for that. As the other reviews have said, it has tonnes of lessons in it. Excellent read.

Wole Soyinka, the first Nigerian Nobel Prize winner in Literature(or any category I think, for that matter) really shows his worth as a writer and as a traditional and cultural Nigerian. Little wonder that he gets the respect and admiration he receives back at home.

A Great Play
When I read this play as part of a World Lit. class in my high school it changed the way I look a literature. To that point I hadbeen mainly interested in history and politics. In the Lion and the Jewel, Soyinka combines his political ideas about colonization, cultures, and gender roles in to this vivid play. He creates multiple conflicts between the very well-defined characters and over the course of the play the conflicts evolve into macrocosmic conflicts that readers and audiences alike can relate too. The themes in this play are very strong and speak loudly when juxtaposed against current world events.

I cannot recommend this play enough!! Check it out.

Excellent Excellent Excellent
Thumbs up to the author. He is one of my favorite author. He writes well. The book is perfect.

Excellent Excellent Excellent
Thumbs up to the author. He is one of my favorite author. He writes well. The book is perfect. ... Read more

Product Description
Death and the King's Horseman (1975) is the most widely read work by Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature. The text is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory annotations. "Backgrounds and Contexts" provides readers with a thorough understanding of the play's traditional African contexts. "Criticism" includes nine major essays on Death and the King's Horseman, focusing on the difficulties the play presents to its readers.

About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

Powerful Play from the Nobel Prizewinner
Be sure to read the author's note, because if you don't, you might take it as an East vs. West, colonial vs. tribal, new vs. old story as it would appear on first reading. But in his note, Soyinka states that the "threnodic essence" of the work is a theme even more universal: "the numinous passage which links all: transition." Change is indeed common to us all, and as my mother-in-law points out, change is usually perceived as bad. Yet change is something we all must come to terms with, and since one of literature's great benefits is to act as a mental dress rehearsal for life, this lean play (acessible on first reading, yet rich enough to reread) should find a place on every thoughtful reader's shelf.

The university-educated Soyinka (as one can infer from the author's note) has quite the erudite vocabulary, yet the prose style of Death and the King's Horseman reminded me more of ancient Greek tragedy in translation than anything else: simple yet poetic phrasing, and the homespun proverbial sayings of a pre-industrial age. What struck me as an information-age Westerner was how many of these Yoruba sayings (being related to animals or farming) were hard to relate to; an incidental lesson of this book was how detached from the natural world I've become. Visiting nature for recreation isn't the same as having your livelihood dependent on it.

Another aspect of this play that happens to be particularly interesting in juxtaposition to the film juggernaut of Avatar is that neither the Nigerian characters nor the English are portrayed as completely right or wrong, sympathetic or not. Sure, the English come off as somewhat ignorant intruders, yet they act in good faith; conversely, Elesin, the protagonist, initially appears heroic but as events unfold he grows less so. Whereas in Avatar the modern Westerners are evil caricatures and the Na'vi noble savages, in Soyinka's work matters are more nuanced--more like real life.

Background info on religious views very helpful
The literary criticism contained here will be extremely helpful in teaching this complex work. Kudos

Excellent Service
The delivery was earlier than anticipated with good after purchase follow up. The book was in good condition.

Death and the King's Horseman
Excellent book.Provocative story, well written. The Norton Critical Edition is especially useful in evaluating the text.

A good intro to the work of this winner of Nobel Prize for Literature
This is a definate must read. Written as a poetic play, Soyinka captures the Yoruba experience during the British occupation of Nigeria. It captures their perception of their colonizers, their religious ideologies in sharp contrast with that of the British, their political stance including about Yoruba persons who worked for the British at the time(hence, the mimic men/women) and their trauma and lamentations regarding the slave trade. The title refers to a specific issue that main protagonists will struggle with, leading to the Yoruba/British clash of religious and political ideologies. The result unveils the hypocracy of forced-conversion and explores issues of (in)humanity, suicide and freedom by examining each group's relationship with their leaders, their understanding of the divine God(s) and destiny. This book is one of the texts used in African literature classes. ... Read more

Product Description
'"The Lion and the Jewel" alone is enough to establish Nigeria as the most fertile new source of English-speaking drama since Synge's discovery of the Western Isles.' - "The Times". The ironic development and consequences of 'progress' may be traced through both the themes and the tone of the works included in this second volume of Wole Soyinka's plays. "The Lion and the Jewel" shows an ineffectual assault on past tradition soundly defeated. In "Kongi's Harvest", however, the pretensions of Kongi's regime are also fatal. The denouement points the way forward. "The Two Brother Jero" plays pursue that way, the comic 'propheteering' of the earlier play giving way to the sardonic reality of "Jero's Metamorphosis". "Madmen and Specialists", Soyinka's most pessimistic play, concerns the physical, mental, and moral destruction of modern civil war. ... Read more

Product Description
Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and one of the foremost living African writers, here analyses the interconnecting worlds of myth, ritual and literature in Africa. The ways in which the African world perceives itself as a cultural entity, and the differences between its essential unity of experience and literary form and the sense of division pervading Western literature, are just some of the issues addressed. The centrality of ritual gives drama a prominent place in Soyinka's discussion, but he deals in equally illuminating ways with contemporary poetry and fiction. Above all, the fascinating insights in this book serve to highlight the importance of African criticism in addition to the literary and cultural achievements which are the subject of its penetrating analysis. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Cantankerous Soyinka
The Ocident meets Africa in it's inherent opacity. This collection of Soyinka's essays are typical of his volatile temperment bursting through as to evoke a degree of amusement. Lumbering and academic a good study read.Providing a predictable alternative reading of the african tradition. ... Read more

Product Description
When Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka's The Open Sore of a Continent appeared in 1996, it received rave reviews in the national media.Now comes Soyinka's powerful sequel to that fearless and passionate book, The Burden of Memory.

Where Open Sore offered a critique of African nationhood and a searing indictment of the Nigerian military and its repression of human and civil rights, The Burden of Memory considers all of Africa--indeed, all the world--as it poses the next logical question: Once repression stops, is reconciliation between oppressor and victim possible? In the face of centuries' long devastations wrought on the African continent and her Diaspora--by slavery, colonialism, Apartheid and the manifold faces of racism--what form of recompense could possibly be adequate? In a voice as eloquent and humane as it is forceful, Soyinka examines this fundamental question as he illuminates the principle duty and "near intolerable burden" of memory to bear the record of injustice.In so doing, he challenges notions of simple forgiveness, of confession and absolution, as strategies for social healing.Ultimately, he turns to art--poetry, music, painting--as one source that may nourish the seed of reconciliation, art as the generous vessel that can hold together the burden of memory and the hope of forgiveness.

Based on Soyinka's Stewart-McMillan lectures delivered at the Du Bois Institute at Harvard, The Burden of Memory speaks not only to those concerned specifically with African politics, but also to anyone seeking the path to social justice through some of history's most inhospitable terrain.Amazon.com Review
When a book begins with a statement such as "In the 1992presidential elections, it would appear that the United States stood areasonable chance of acquiring a new president in the person of acertain Mr. David Duke," a reader must wonder if the author is beingdeliberately alarmist or has simply lost contact with reality. (Afterall, Duke had little national credibility, and even his campaigns inhis home state of Louisiana could best be described as highlyproblematic.) On matters concerning his native Nigeria, and on therest of the African nations, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is perhapsmore reliable, albeit still somewhat longwinded. The Burden ofMemory is based on a set of lectures Soyinka gave at theW.E.B. Dubois Institute and faithfully preserves their highly academicorality, whether he is advocating massive reparations for the peopleof Africa for the historical injustices to which they have beensubject, or using literary criticism to explore the ways in whichAfricans have been willing to "forgive" Westerners in the hopes ofassimilating into the culture that formerly treated them as vassals. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Wole Soyinka The Giant
You read Wole Soyinka's work and you become a man, period. Please don't try reviewing work you don't understand. A quotation from Henry David Thoreau on "READING" will help those struggling with understading and of course in categorising reviewers: A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar, but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;-and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading... a very low level, worthy only of pigmies and manikins. That was WALDEN (1854) but still relevant today.

...of social existence...
This is a highly analytical, scholarly book, three lectures Soyinka gave at Harvard through it's W.E.B. Dubois Institute's Macmillan series in 1997.
This is also a densely packed linguistic explosion, a cultural retrospective of the ancients' behaviors, the modern ones, and the poet's struggle to express the depth of existence.
I also got through it only because I percieved and imagined the flow of the statements through clear imagery. There was much that I lost and as much time marveling at the control and brilliance of his mind to evoke the depths of Negritude, it's descendant issues and conflicts, and the artist's all important concern for the state of life.
But if I had attended these lectures I would have been gone. Off to the idea expressed ten minutes ago.But the thoughts of man's brutality of itself and incredible passages like this thrilled and bore into me:

"the fact remains that the other has impinged on it in a way that permanently precludes the solace of remaining within the secure isolation of its own precedent world order, or whatever vestiges of it are left. In short, the effects of that 'disdain' appear permanent, inescapable; they are to be read in a thousand and one actualities that plague the continent, and can be measured in the retardation of social existence against the visible prosperity of the other on a shared planet." (pg.185)

This is a book about the "...the retardation of social existence..."

In defense of a great author
Let me start by acknowledging that I haven't read this particular work.I'm merely expressing my ire at an ignoramus of a reviewer from Philadelphia, who suggested that Soyinka's nobel prize was not well deserved.While I'd be the first to acknowledge that Soyinka's writing can be difficult, I would suggest that this cretin start off with Soyinka's autobiographical corpus of "Ake: the years of childhood", "Isara" and "Ibadan: the pemkelemes years" then, maybe such powerful (if acerbic and polemical) works as "The Man Died," before attempting the more difficult critical works like "Myth, Literature and the African World" and by all accounts, the work under review.

I do not believe that such a powerful mind as Soyinka's, could write a lightweight tome and so while I haven't read "The Burden of Memory," I'm willing to stick my neck out and give it three stars if only because while Soyinka's mastery of language is beyond doubt, his quest for precision, sometimes, rather ironically, renders his writing a tad dense; which can be the only explanation for the bulk of complaints, levelled at this work, on this occassion.

Soyinka is more than "The Burden of Memory..."
Wole Soyinka's mastery of the English language, as I have had occasion to say on another forum, borders on the supernatural. And perhaps therein lies the man's flaw--but that is a matter I will get to in a minute.

"The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness," you must understand, is "in the obligatory [Soyinka] fashion," a compilation of oral lectures the learned professor gave at Harvard. You must understand too, that the writing is basically academic, and suited more to an oral lecture. And because we speak of Soyinka, the writing is characteristically difficult.

So then, his lectures-turn-books (including, of course, "The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness") are not the best of works with which to appraise Soyinka's genius.For a true appreciation of Soyinka's literary prowess, you must read his plays and novels.

The flaw, of which I spoke earlier, is captured in the question a friend once posed to me (not Soyinka): "Is not the purpose of language to communicate?" Without a full-fledged dictionary, and the will to re-read whole paragraphs, one would struggle to keep up with Soyinka's writing.

In all, whether one likes it or not, the man is a literary giant, period!

Mildly interesting at best
There is no doubt that Wole Soyinka is a good writer - his Nobel prize was justly deserved and not a case of affirmative action as another reviewer insultingly suggested.However, someone encountering Soyinka for the first time in this book would not be tempted to try reading his more famous writings: this book is, to be frank, not well written.Based on three lectures Soyinka gave at Harvard University in 1997, Soyinka touches upon the very topical reparations controversy in the first essay, praises the Senegalese writer Leopold Senghor in the second and spends the last examining African poets' attempts to deal with the legacies of colonialism and racism.

Through all three lectures Soyinka employs a very dense style, one that might have worked well when speaking for an academic audience at Harvard but one that does not translate well onto the written page.Phrases like 'slaves into the twentieth-first century, mouthing the mangy mandates of mendacity, ineptitude, corruption and sadism' sound impressive but are merely a means for Soyinka to play around with words when he could be spending his time seriously addressing very important issues like reparations.When he does get down to business, he writes that 'reparations would involve the acceptance by Western nations of a moral obligation to repatriate the post-colonial loot salted away in their vaults, in real estate and business holdings' but never goes into detail exactly what this would involve.What is more disturbing is his frequent references to the U.S., which reveal his real ignorance about American life: examples include his belief that David Duke could have been elected President in 1992 and that the Ku Klux Klan held or holds a 'tentacular hold over power structures across the United States.'If he knows so little about the country where he is giving his lectures (and also holds a job as a Professor at Emory University), should we trust him to do a good job at addressing the international debate on reparations?

I didn't give this book one star for the fact that Soyinka's second and third lectures are reasonably coherent and do a good job of tracing the literary history behind Negritude.(For instance, he discusses the reasons why American black writers were in closer contact with Francophone blacks rather than their Anglophone brothers.)Yet even here he does not attempt to present any kind of thesis, but is merely contented with quoting various poems and doing some quick literary analysis.

Readers with an interest in discovering why Soyinka won the Nobel Prize should thus turn elsewhere. ... Read more

Product Description
The Nobel Laureate's first novel spotlights a small circle of young Nigerian intellectuals living in Lagos. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

avoid this book at all costs
It took countless attempts and a few really long flights to finish this drivel. There is nothing in this book that should save it from recycling. Pity, a good tree was killed to print it. I wondered how on Earth it could get the Nobel Prize... And then I saw that Wole Soyinka was the first African author to receive it. And it was his first novel. That explains! The old f.rts from the Novel Committee chose an unknown author, made sure he is black and from Africa, and gave him the prize. You say it can't be? Why not? Obama got nominated for the Nobel after only 20 days in the office. What's the difference?

As for the novel itself: the language is difficult and mostly annoying; characters are short-tempered loons with unpredictable and illogical behaviours; the story line is absent and is rather a hodge-podge of some unrelated and badly writen events. After turning the last page you ask yourself: what was the pont of all that? The only idea that is clearly defined is that whites are bad. Everything about whites in the book is bad. One of the main characters is simply a black chauvinist. The black professor is ridiculed and insulted only because he has European manners. The only "positive" white character is good because she tries to be black by being rude and arrogant. Do you think there is a moral to all this? Think again.

And to all those voices of "indignation" that will accuse me of not knowing the African culture... Actually, I lived in Africa for 10 years and was a citizen of an African country. So, I know. It is those with ".edu" extension on their e-mails who don't.

An African novel with a '60s spirit and sense of humor.
"The Interpreters" are a group of Nigerian intellectuals who have traveled outside their home country and who have returned to confront and understand the gods of their ancestors, the government of their country, and their own fates. The book reminded me of some of my favorite "anarchic" novels of the '50s and '60s-"Lucky Jim," "The End of the Road," even "The Crying of Lot 49." Sagoe, the journalist character, has a fascinating and scatalogical philosophy of life that parodies French existentialism very cleverly. The other characters include a frustrated engineer who becomes a great sculptor, a painter hard at work throughout the narrative on an epic canvas depicting all the main characters as versions of the gods of Yorubaland, and an eccentric white Englishwoman who has married an unsuitable Nigerian bureaucrat and befriended his more liberal mother. The book works on several levels--as farce, as cultural critique of colonialism, and as an exploration of the ongoing legacy of the Yoruba gods who animate and obsess the interpreters. Most importantly, it is an entertaining and unpredictable story full of sharp insights and surprises. ... Read more

Product Description
The Nobel Laureate's reputation as a dramatist tends to cloud his poetic achievement, and in modern African literature, poetry lives in the shadow of fiction. The criticism of Soyinka's poetry has so far centred on his themes of individuality and death, his imagery, and on the controversy over his authenticity, obscurity and difficulty. Here, in a new approach, an academic himself and one of the leading younger generation of African poets, discusses critically the voice and viewpoint of the poet with the object of establishing Soyinka's persona. The book covers the personality and world view of the man, as revealed in his poetry. ... Read more

Product Description
Six masterful works by the Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian playwright. Death and the King's Horseman: 'A transfixing work of modern world drama' (Independent); Madmen and Specialists: 'A luminous play, examining the way in which war exposes and clarifies human conduct' (Observer); Opera Wonyosi, adapted from Gay's The Beggar's Opera: 'Swaggering and scabrous, at once a verbal spree and a fierce assault on totalitarianism' (Observer). The volume also contains The Trials of Brother Jero and Jero's Metamorphosis, classic comedies of modern Nigerian life based on the hilarious and manipulative transformations of a preacher, and Camwood on the Leaves, a haunting radio play, which evokes a divided community. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

We Feel Your Pain (especially if you are from Unionville)
I can understand that if you have an in-depth knowledge of current African politics and folklore, you could appreciate this book. However, if you are a student (likely from Unionville High School) this book will be incomprehensible to you. This editorial is written by three students who are forced to present a seminar on this play and we have no idea what we are doing. To future Unionville students who are forced to read this play: we're laughing at you right now. We know who your English teacher is. He COULD have made reading this play an enriching experience for you by telling you what on earth it is about, but unfortunately for you, he takes great pleasure in watching us all crumble to the ground in failure.

Just remember: the Half-Child is EVERYONE. Humanity. Instant 100%.

Proverb to bones and silence. ... Read more

Product Description
Set in Nigeria, amid the scenes of everyday racketeering and general disquiet, the police try to clear the area of undesirables, as a traditional wedding between two illustrious and ambitious families is about to take place. This play is by Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Splendid
Nigerian-born Nobel Literature Prize Laureate (1986) Wole Soyinka's The Road is a quasi-realistic play which incorporates elements from the theater of the absurd.It is a comedy of sorts, not exactly a comedie noire, as the French say, but with similar satirical intent.It is also a deeply symbolic play.

The action comprises a single day, from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.The scene is a road-side shack presumably in Nigeria with a church close by, parts of which are also on stage.Part of the shack is a used parts store, and there is a dilapidated "mammy waggon" downstage and to the side opposite the church.

The central character is the PROFESSOR who stands for civilization and literacy.He has the power of the Word, and this power sustains him above his fellows.The PROFESSOR uses his literacy to forge documents such as driver's licenses.This too is part of his power.He is a contradictory character, and the Word is slippery and is not always an embodiment of the truth.The PROFESSOR stands in opposition to the Church and its Bishop.

SAMSON is the tout for the "No Danger, No Delay" lorry service.A tout is one who finds customers for the company, who seats them and maybe carries their luggage and flatters them.SAMSON is a practical man.

KOTONU is a driver who works with SAMSON.SALUBI is a driver trainee, a superstitious man.MURANO, whom Soyinka says represents the suspension of death, is a mute and personal servant to the PROFESSOR.

PARTICULARS JOE is a cop who always wants the "particulars" of the case.He apparently lives as much on the bribes he receives as he does on his salary.SAY TOKYO KID is the leader of the thugs and a driver.

The hangers-on and such serve as a musical and dancing chorus throughout the play.They sing dirges and act out tribal dances sometimes using the Mask which may hide the god of death, or as Soyinka has it, the Mask represents "a religious cult of flesh dissolution."Throughout there are references to Orgun, the tribal god of iron and war.During the Festival of the Drivers, there is the "Feast of Orgun, the Dog-eater" with the idea that the Road eats dogs that get in the way of the wheels of the lorries.

The characters in the play make their living from the road and its traffic.Some of them even chase after accidents and remove things of value from the vehicles--even the clothes of the dead--and sell them in the "Care of Accident Supply Store."

The central element is the road of course, the road like a river that runs through their lives and through their civilization, a road that lies flat and then, like a coiled snake, snaps up and brings to death by accident those who travel on its back.The road is also that which transforms the forest, as they take its timber, into the hard concrete and asphalt of the city.It is the road that transforms the life of the tribesman into that of the city dweller.One might compare the Road to the Way of the Taoists, but of course here the road is actively malicious.In a sense then this play is a religious allegory with the tension contained between the Road and the Word.

Soyinka's dialogue is in English with some Pidgin departures and with some vocabulary from the Yoruba language mixed in.Soyinka has a master's ear and an artist's touch with language.He has the characters at times talking past one another, each with his own concern, as in an absurdist play, and at other times he has them mouthing words of philosophic import.It is especially the PROFESSOR who waxes philosophical.He is a bit of a cynic who exclaims at one point, "Have you sold your soul for money? You lie like a prophet."He adds, "Truth?Truth? Truth my friend is scum risen on the froth of wine" reminding me of Pontius Pilate whom Sir Francis Bacon famously has asking, "What is truth?" and not staying for an answer.

PARTICULARS JOE, who was once a soldier, can also be philosophical, sometimes in an ironic way as when he declares "It is peaceful to fight a war which one does not understand, to kill human beings who never seduced your wife or poisoned your water."And there are jokes and witty sayings which Soyinka springs upon us by surprise from time to time.A nice exchange begins when PARTICULARS JOE pockets a coin that belongs to SAMSON that he finds in a crack on the floor:

SAMSON: That happens to be mine.

JOE [blandly]: That's O.K. Natural mistake on my part.Money has been left for me in more unlikely places believe me.

SAMSON: Well at least wait until I am back on the road before you collect tolls.

This inspires the PROFESSOR to ask JOE, How is the criminal world my friend?

JOE: More lucrative every day Professor.

PROFESSOR: Not for the criminal I trust.

JOE (with unintentional irony I presume): Oh no sir.That would only corrupt them.

One sees the influence of such absurdist playwrights as Samuel Beckett, Bertold Brecht and Eugene Ionesco in this play, but I believe Soyinka is both more realistic and funnier.He spent some part of his formative years in London where he was educated and worked in the theatre and where his first plays were produced.His mastery of the elements of the theater is obvious even from reading just this one play.I am looking forward to exploring more of Soyinka's work. ... Read more