Wole Soyinka Speaks Of Africa in New Book

A member of the unique generation of African writers and intellectuals who came of age in the last days of colonialism, Wole Soyinka has witnessed the promise of independence and lived through postcolonial failure. He deeply comprehends the pressing problems of Africa, and, an irrepressible essayist and a staunch critic of the oppressive boot, he unhesitatingly speaks out.

In this magnificent new work, Soyinka offers a wide-ranging inquiry into Africa's culture, religion, history, imagination, and identity. He seeks to understand how the continent's history is entwined with the histories of others, while exploring Africa's truest assets: "its humanity, the quality and valuation of its own existence, and modes of managing its environment—both physical and intangible (which includes the spiritual)."

Fully grasping the extent of Africa's most challenging issues, Soyinka nevertheless refuses defeatism. With eloquence he analyzes problems ranging from the meaning of the past to the threat of theocracy. He asks hard questions about racial attitudes, inter-ethnic and religious violence, the viability of nations whose boundaries were laid out by outsiders, African identity on the continent and among displaced Africans, and more. Soyinka's exploration of Africa relocates the continent in the reader's imagination and maps a course toward an African future of peace and affirmation.

“The Nigerian 1986 Nobel Laureate (Literature) offers a slender, hopeful volume about his native continent’s potential for healing the world’s spiritual ills. . . . A brief but eloquent plea for peace.”—Kirkus Reviews

(Kirkus Reviews )

“A fascinating, urgent appraisal of Africa’s relationship to the world. . . . Pitched to a general reader but with implications for specialists as well, this is necessarily big thinking laced with the subtle insights and analogies of a gifted writer, and a stirring defense of the ‘spiritual aspirations’ of human beings for freedom and peace.”—Publishers Weekly

(Publishers Weekly )

"Of Africa is an intellectually robust, book-length essay that attempts to unravel the paradoxes and contradictions plaguing Nigeria and, by extension, Africa. . . . Soyinka’s motivation for writing Of Africa was his search for an African humanism that could counter the deadly consequences of religious fanaticism. He urges Africans to remember their continent’s traditions and recognize that tolerance is at the center of African spirituality.”—George Ayittey, Wall Street Journal

(George Ayittey Wall Street Journal 20121103)

“Among the Africans who deserve some kind of secular sainthood is Wole So­yinka. . . . Vast injustices remain [in Africa], but the continent is lucky to have fearless men and women of conscience, like Soyinka, who are so acutely aware of them.”—Adam Hochschild, New York Times Book Review

(Adam Hochschild New York Times Book Review 20121104)

 “Soyinka does not deceive himself about the profound problems that Africa faces today. But [the book’s] overall tenor . . . is optimistic, emphasizing Africa’s capacity to inspire authentic spirituality (the continent, he reminds us, is ‘filled with religions that point the way to the harmonization of faiths’) and resilient, life-embracing humanity.”—Booklist

(Booklist 20121115)

“The playwright and human rights activist defends Africa against its condescending critics, offering both sweeping reflections and clear-eyed assessments.”—Editors’ Choice, New York Times Book Review

(New York Times Book Review )

“Of Africa offers a well-conceived vision for the potential healing of the continent. . . . Soyinka's inquiry arrives at one impassioned plea--tolerance. Africa's various sects, he tells us, must come to the collective bargaining table with an embrace of its tradition and innate differences in order to truly become whole.”—Nancy Powell, Shelf Awareness

(Nancy Powell Shelf Awareness )

Soyinka's perspective “is helpful in guiding readers to a different way of looking at much that is Africa, and, as such, Of Africa is an eloquent and useful starting point for readers.”—M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review

(M. A. Orthofer The Complete Review )

“The Nobel laureate and Nigerian playwright tries to rescue Africa from racism, ignorance, and stereotype in this forceful manifesto.”—The Daily Beast

(The Daily Beast 20121112)




Tweet

Meet Me At the Nearest Library; I’ll Be Waiting

Adeleke “Mai Nasara” Adeyemi, author, The Missing Clock, winner of the 2011 Nigeria Prize for Literature lifting up his trophy at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos on February 6, 2012, with the Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka standing behind on the stage.

Meet Me at the Library: Getting Nigeria to Book a Date with Development.
Being a speech by Adeleke “Mai Nasara” Adeyemi, author, The Missing Clock: Winner, The Nigeria Prize for Literature, 2011; delivered at Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos on February 6, 2012, at Public Presentation and Award Ceremony, hosted by Nigeria LNG Ltd.



Protocols
A certain 18th century English poet woke up one day and penned the following words: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”. I am not sure what Alexander Pope was thinking about that particular day but I know he was right about the human heart and its penchant for hope. It was sheer hope that drove me to enter my first published work for The Nigeria Prize for Literature.
If I learnt nothing else from this experience, I have learned that hope drives us towards success even beyond our imagination. I dared hope to make the shortlist; I won the Prize.

Today, I dare to hope again. This time, it is my hope that by the end of this event and long afterwards, the one thing that would mostly be on our minds, and lips, would be libraries. Yes, libraries. I will tell you why in a moment.
Before I talk about libraries, I would like to thank the Panel of Judges for finding The Missing Clock worthy of honour. Similarly, I salute Nigeria LNG Limited for their no-holds-barred sponsorship of The Nigeria Prize for Literature, along with its twin, The Nigeria Prize for Science.


Adeleke receiving his trophy from Mr. Babs Jolayemi Omotowa, the Managing Director of the Nigeria LNG Limited. Standing beside him is the famous Nigerian poet and novelist, Pa Gabriel Okara, who has been a joint-winner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2005 with the late Ezenwa Ohaeto. Okara has also won several literary awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my life has been much enriched by literature. The stories I have read in books have ensured my spiritual, mental, physical, and, yes, financial well-being. It is for this reason that I was not surprised when I came across this quote from none other than Chinua Achebe: “Stories are not just meant to make us laugh; our lives depend on them.”

I have always loved books. My fondest memories of childhood are of the times I spent immersed in books.

Born to Yoruba parents, I grew up in Katsina State, a mere Nigerian boy among many other Nigerian children. That’s why I’m "Mai Nasara" and don’t feel dichotomized. At Government College Katsina, GCK, I was at home in a sea of humanity, a veritable tapestry woven from far-flung lands as of my Japanese woodwork teacher, who put up a plaque at the entrance of the school library that I still see today in my head: “A school is a book in which is written the future of the nation”.

Time will fail me to talk about my English Language teacher, the Ghanaian Mr Sereboh, with his ever-present cane (every one of us knew how to say ‘bulala’ in reverential tones) that thwacked so much more on the blackboard than on buttocks; my Filipino Technical Drawing teacher who, without asking our permission, propped herself up on a box to enable her carry on against all odds at the blackboard.

I was a mere Nigerian boy—until March 1987. That was the first time religious riots came to my adopted home of Katsina. As we embarked on our exodus to the Army barracks in town, because the parents insisted it was unsafe to stay overnight amidst the ‘other’ townspeople, silent stares and stony silences transpired among differently believing neighbours and classmates, employers and employees.

Before that watershed day, I waded through the motley space of the weekly Yankutungu Market on my way home with my childhood friend, CNS Okereke. Although I grew up having several other friends, I remember CNS with fond affection because his family home held a magnet for me: shelves bulging with books and yet more books along with myriad magazines—Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, New African, West Africa, and many others.

Unlike today, most publications of the time were safe for children to read. I bought two newspapers every waking day, from my pocket money; my father bought his own two to make for a bounteous binge-a-day. From my father, and others like Benjamin Franklin, whom I encountered in art and science, I learned that good parents, leaders and role models take special pride in knowledge and do everything to contribute to the education of the young. Mr Franklin in particular fascinates me.
A town in Massachusetts in the United States named itself after Franklin in honour of the famous Pennsylvanian. In return, Franklin, who is revered as the founding father of American Independence, donated books for use by the local residents. He was asked to donate a church bell instead but declined, on the basis that “sense” was preferable to “sound.”

Unfortunately, Nigerian children today feed their minds with “sound and fury, signifying nothing” as William Shakespeare wrote. But it is not entirely their fault. For some reason, those of us who grew up reading good books and learning from stories in them seem to have conspired to deny the young generation the benefit of that knowledge and more.

The evidence of this conspiracy can be found in many schools, and indeed communities. We find it in the private school with a small room, stuffed with many colourful books telling stories of summer, snow and cookies. We find it in the public school with a room large enough to house a thousand titles, like The Runaway Hero, The Great Fall, Heads and Tales, One Little Mosquito and Eno’s Story, by my friends, Uche Peter Umez, Chinyere Obi-Obasi, Yemi Sanusi, Ndidi Chiazor-Enenmor and Ayodele Olofintuade, respectively, and Jelly Baby, by my mentor, Philip Begho, a master storyteller, nestling side-by-side with Mabel Segun and the Dr Seuss’ classics; but instead has a few shelves and chairs, and even fewer titles. Both rooms are pompously labelled “Library”.
But, can we truly say we have libraries in this country?

In a civilized society, the public library is the visible face of government.
As John N. Berry III so rightly observed: “The public library is an excellent model of government at its best. A locally controlled public good, it serves every individual freely, in as much or as little depth as he or she wants.”
Books do change people. Wonder of wonders, they have been known to change society at large.

We will never grow a civilized and responsible citizenry without the book. It is not a luxury; it is a lifeline. There will never be justification to banish the book for only with it can we frustrate the fanatic with his fateful folly.

Community libraries lie at the bedrock of American greatness, a reality I have seen in the public library in the county where I have lived for some time now. I have roamed its length and breadth and depths (yes, it has a basement floor brimming with children’s books for various grades). My wife would later summarize my first trip there to colleagues (who probably all their lives have taken the library for granted) in these words: “My husband was just like a boy in a candy store!”
It was in this library that I finally got hold of Chinua Achebe’s How the Leopard Got its Claws, a boon of a book for children and adults alike that perfectly illustrates the 200-year-old truism by French nobleman Joseph de Maistre: “Every country has the government it deserves” (written on August 15, 1811), often quoted anonymously as, “People get the leadership they deserve.” (Sometimes rendered vice versa as “People deserve the leadership they get.”)

I was a little skeptical when the thought entered my mind to recommend a book, written by a Nigerian author whose entry made the Initial Shortlist for The Nigeria Prize for Literature, 2011, for purchase by my county library. How thrilled I was, really to the marrow, when just days after, acting on a hunch, I logged into my library account and, searching, saw that the book had been purchased by the library!
Ladies and gentlemen, just imagine what a country we will have if children from Anambra to Zamfara, Abakaliki to Zungeru, Akure to Zaria, all grow up reading stories of hope, courage, patriotism, responsible citizenship, of our common humanity, written by some of our best authors! It most certainly won’t be one kept running on barrels of innocent blood spilled hither and thither, every now and then, again and again.

I agree there is a decline in reading culture but can we truly say the books are available for our kids even if they wanted to read? Why can’t we have modern libraries in our schools or public areas?

I asked that last question once and someone said, “Ah, but who can fund such projects?”
“Mo Ibrahim,” I sputtered, before realizing many were listening for my answer. Goodness, help!
I started ‘following’ Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim, one of the pioneers of GSM telephony, once I came across something he wrote about an inductee of TIME 100 in 2011. An initiative of Time news-magazine, that annual list brims with profiles of movers and shakers of our world; every edition is a complete curriculum of lessons in leadership and development.
Dr. Ibrahim wrote on the vision of Bineta Diop, founder of Femmes Africa Solidarité, an organization with a focus on women-led peace-building work in the most fragile of states on the African continent: “Women are the economic drivers of Africa, on average working twice as many productive hours as men. They are also the constituency most incentivized to build peace. A gender-based approach to conflict prevention has the potential to transform the continent.”

Indeed, women have a significant role to play in Africa’s development—from Algeria to Zimbabwe, armed with stories of ‘How-to’ for one another and their children, swappable at the well, mill and clothesline. For advancing this view, and so eloquently, I have come to regard Dr Ibrahim as a true visionary, a very wealthy and generous one to boot.

Dr. Ibrahim’s foundation administers the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. The award is a US$5 million initial payment (it is believed to be the world’s largest, exceeding the US$1.3m Nobel Peace Prize) and a US$200,000 annual payment, for life, to the African head of state who delivers the most security, health, education and economic development to his (or her) constituents and democratically transfers power to their successor. The foundation, much like the Nigeria LNG-sponsored The Nigeria Prizes, doesn’t always succeed in realizing its yearly goal.

It is my conviction that Dr. Ibrahim’s foundation would even better promote leadership, development and democracy in Africa by paying heed to Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi’s prescription: “If we are to teach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”
The dividends of development will be more visible if Dr. Ibrahim, for instance, redirects his attention and mammoth resources to endowing a network of public libraries, customized to helping our children play catch-up with their peers around the world; give each a head start.

I assure Dr. Ibrahim—along with any other takers out there—that they would, to get the point across more forcefully using an Americanism, get more bang for the buck by building libraries, each determined by John Wood (details later) to cost US$5,000. Just imagine the alternative trail that could be blazed with one Mo Ibrahim Prize money and dole-outs over a ten-year period!

A little math will bring this out clearly: US$5 million equals 1,000 Room to Read-type, ready-to-admit libraries! And from annual add-on ‘maintenance’: US$200,000 equals 40 more libraries, on a yearly basis!

I look around and see many Mo Ibrahims here—which is why I dare to hope. I believe that as individuals, and corporate bodies, we too can join in this noble cause. And we would be in really good company. The Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) built 2,509 public libraries: 1,689 in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific Island nation of Fiji.



When he made out his last grant, the total number of libraries in the United States came to 3,500, nearly half of them built with construction grants made available by Carnegie. The first of Carnegie’s public libraries opened in his hometown of Dunfermline in Scotland, in 1883. The locally quarried sandstone building dazzled all with its stylized sun bearing a carved motto at the entrance: “Let there be light”.

Following hard in the footsteps of Carnegie is former Microsoft top executive, John Wood. His Room to Read, an award-winning non-profit headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, is founded on the belief that “World Change Starts with Educated Children.” The organization focuses on improving literacy and gender equality in education in the developing world.

Working in collaboration with local communities, partner NGOs and governments, Room to Read develops literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children, and supports girls to complete secondary school with the relevant life skills to succeed in life. It currently serves communities in nine countries across Asia and Africa, with plans to expand into a tenth country, Tanzania.

You just must get John Wood’s memoir, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, to read! Today, Room to Read has built nearly five times as many libraries as Carnegie! Incredibly, in 2010, nearly 9 million books (that’s 95 every minute!) were checked out from Room to Read libraries—now numbering 12,500, a milestone achieved over 10 years.

Now all I want to do with this opportunity is to sell John Wood’s model, powered by a one-liner conviction, to Uncle Mo and a smattering of other African entrepreneurs and philanthropists: “It takes educated children to change the world.” A not-so-trivia: Room to Read is now opening new libraries at an astonishing rate of six a day. Compare McDonald’s one new outlet every 1.08 days.

If you are a children’s literature enthusiast, or simply a literature buff, you would give John Wood more than a hug; you would kiss him. You see, for literature to be institutionalized anywhere, it must be indigenized—-something Room to Read is keenly aware of and has been working on.

Hear Wood: “Throughout the developing world, most children don’t have access to children’s books in their local language. The few books that are available are either second-hand books in foreign languages or low-quality, black and white books for more mature readers—not the type of literature that is meant to spark a child’s imagination, curiosity, and a desire to learn to read.”

Of course we can and indeed have built a network of public institutions for the common good. A military ruler once built, by executive fiat, expansive twin office buildings in every local government in the land, to convince the people he meant business with his two-party theory. O that these had been the first set of public libraries!

I make bold to say to you today that there is no other way to go—forward. Our children, especially girls, must gain unfettered access to books and the stories in them because a person’s thinking skills—the conceptualization of ideas and their expressions—are heavily dependent on what they read and learn.

Richard Crabbe, former chairman of African Publishers Network has pointed out that “If education is the road out of poverty (the pervading state of affairs in much of Africa), books are the wheels needed for the journey.” Only from rubbing minds with characters in stories from all over the world will we succeed in inculcating in our people, starting as children, the meziere m ya (Igbo: “Do it a little better for me”) mentality.

My friend (I hope!) Muhtar Bakare, the avant-garde publishing maverick, it was who with his Farafina publishing imprint bullhorn got me into preaching the mantra: ‘Telling our own stories’. I’m happy to announce to the world that he has a working paper for realizing the dream of community libraries.

If you have been friends with me for anything up to a week you’d have heard me share the following: “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them.” That quote is from Barry L. Lopez, who went on to say something to the effect that sometimes people need stories more than food to live!

Dear parents and guardians, let us prime our children to go questing... to grow up wanting to read, ask questions, and learn. This is the only way we are guaranteed a future as a nation.

Many of us dream of a better Nigeria for the future generation and rightly so. What baffles me is the seeming sense of helplessness in the land. And hopelessness, which as the poet Pope tells us, is contrary to nature.

Slowly but steadily, Nigeria became a place where the state of mind is ‘Anything Goes’—-what I think Wole Soyinka codified as the doctrine of itirayi. That word is a neologism whose etymology (I like to think the Greek ‘etumos’ is related to the Yoruba ‘itumo’) is simply something contrived from the English verb to ‘try’... as in, to cheat or cut corners!

Well, if you’ve read enough stories you know there is no such thing as cutting corners... and getting away with it! By now you have become a believer in process.
No one seems to know if or how we can achieve our dream Nigeria. Well, I do. I have the perfect answer ready; I have hidden it carefully in Banji’s story in The Missing Clock. All I ask of you today is to put this story and the many others Nigerian authors are telling on a shelf in a library near you, to await discovery by eager hands reaching out to make a contribution.

My wife may not agree that sartorially I’m well-suited for today’s occasion. But if nothing else, my choice apparel is a visual aid for the point of the day.
The garment, as many of you know, is a kaftan. But less known is the icing on the cake. Well, in a manner of speaking.
I’m talking about my cap.
Like the garment it complements, this cap typifies a people. Curiously, the cap is called Mu hadu banki, Hausa for ‘Let’s meet at the bank.’
The origin of such a designation for a mere cap I’m afraid you shall have to find out yourself. Surely that’s not asking too much of you.

While you should not bank on this—or any cap for that matter—to get money from the bank, I’m capitalizing on it to help you get the picture of what I’m convinced lies at the core of why we the people of these Amalgamated Territories of Niger Area (ATNA, I say) have not been able to forge a common identity for ourselves, a rallying point from which core values can become consolidated for building a union with privileges and opportunities accessible to the vast majority.

I have directions for you: Meet me at the library—Mu hadu labri. But don’t show up without children! Whether born to you or any for whom you bear a burden: to see her metamorphose into a Nigerian... calibrated to my benchmark pre-1987 settings, upgraded to the digital Internet age of course. On such children alone we must bank to build the Nigeria of our dreams.

Like a fitting cap, that would be our crowning achievement—and our generation, with its angst and anger, follies and frustrations, would not have been wasted.

If truly we want a better Nigeria, it can happen even in our lifetimes. But we must start now.
At the library—I’ll be waiting.
See you.
Thank you.









Tweet

Wole Soyinka and J.P. Clark at 13th Lagos Book and Art Festival

Lagos Freedom Park at night, the main venue of the 13th Lagos Book and Art Festival.

First African Nobel laureate in Literature Prof. Wole Soyinka and famous dramatist Prof. J.P. Clark were among the special guests on Saturday as they graced the Town Talk on "The Book in the Knowledge Economy" at the on going 13th Lagos Book and Art festival (LABAF) at the Freedom Park on Broad Street, Lagos. Other special guests included Penny Compton and Maggie Robertson from the Hay Festival.

LABAF is the biggest book fair and art event in West Africa founded and organized annually by the Committee For Relevant Art (CORA) in Nigeria.

The festival ends on Sunday with the Arthouse Forum on Art Of The Biography:Reviews and discussions of Femi Osofisan’s J. P. Clark: A Voyage, Adewale Pearce’s A Peculiar Tragedy: J. P. Clark and the beginning of modern Nigerian literature and Dele Olojede/Onukaba Adinoyi Ojo’s Born To Run: a biography of Dele Giwa at noon, followed by the CORA Stampede on "The Nigerian Abroad: Fictional Accounts Of The Immigrant Experience". There will be a panel of discussion on the The Phoenix by Chika Unigwe, Some Kind Of Black by Diran Adebayo, 26A by Dianne Evans, A Squatter’s Tale by Ike Oguine, Her Majesty’s Visit by Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, Icarius Girl by Helen Oyeyemi, Lawless by Sefi Atta and The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

The festival's play is Waiting Room by Wole Oguntokun, to commemorate a fresh start of Nigerian democracy. And the grand finale is the Nigerian premiere of Adopted, a German/Ghanaian documentary directed by Gudrun F. Widlok.

ADOPTED is an agency through which extended families in Africa adopt grown-up Europeans who are detached from their families. The film attends three chosen ones to their new families in Ghana.

Ludger from Berlin just recently found out about ADOPTED. Disappointed with his emotionless surroundings and isolated from friends and family, he has been searching for a long time for an escape. He hesitantly participates in ADOPTED and is selected sooner than expected.

Thelma, on the other hand, can`t wait for the moment of departure. A family in Accra (Ghana) has already agreed to adopt her and she is very pleased to get to know them soon. She packed her suitcases, gave away her furniture and is flying to Africa tomorrow – perhaps forever.

Likewise, Gisela is also excited. The last year was not easy for her. After the death of her husband she doesn`t know where she belongs to. She feels alone in her big house and is thinking about selling it and removing to her native home in the south of Germany. In the radio she hears of ADOPTED and is contacting the agency.

The film depicts the life of the protagonists, their journey to West-Africa and a process of anticipated closeness and inevitable misunderstandings.

~ By Ekenyrengozi Michael Chima

Tweet

Books Are More Important Than Business Companies

Books Are More Important Than Business Companies

It is a great pity that majority of Nigerians are intellectual illiterates or intellectual dummies.

The greatest nations on earth have been built on the foundations of books.
The Greek-Roman Civilation would not have existed without the Classics.
Israel was built on the Holy Scripture.
The Industrial Revolution was propelled by The Renaissance.
The United States of America was built by the vision of the Founding Fathers whose books launched the American Dream.
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream launched the emergence of Barack Obama, the first black President of the USA.

Chinua Achebe's all time classic Things Fall Apart has done more for African Civilization than the First Bank of Nigeria Plc.
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka's corpus means more to the world than Union Bank Plc.
Have you read You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir ?

In fact, I will not exchange my new historical documentary on Barack Obama for the whole of Globacom.

I regard books more than workplaces.

If only Nigerians love books as much as they love their GSM phones and each of the over 75 million GSM users spend only N500 monthly to buy a Nigerian book instead of spending it on unprofitable text messages and gossip calls, Nigerians would be more educated and rewarded and develop faster than ever before.



Half of a Yellow Sun ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Becoming Abigail ~ Christopher Abani

The Thing Around Your Neck ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Wayo Guy and other Nigerian Short Stories ~ Chima Uchendu

The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Series) ~ Wole Soyinka

Prof. Wole Soyinka to Star in new Film

Prof. Wole Soyinka

Not many people know that the first African Nobel Prize winner in Literature Prof. Wole Soyinka whose corpus promotes the Yorùbá religious tradition is a professional actor and director on stage and the silver screen. His movies are Kongi’s Harvest in 1970 and Blues for a Prodigal, in 1984 and he is returning to play a leading role in a new feature Letter to the Prof by Chike Ibekwe.


Ake: The Years of Childhood ~ Wole Soyinka

You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir ~ Wole Soyinka

Death and the King's Horseman (Norton Critical Editions) ~ Wole Soyinka

Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World (Reith Lectures) ~ Wole Soyinka

Myth, Literature and the African World (Canto) ~ Wole Soyinka

The Lion and the Jewel (Three Crowns Book) ~ Wole Soyinka

Collected Plays: Volume 1 (Includes a Dance of the Forests/the Swamp Dwellers/the Strong Breed/the Road/the Bacchae of Euripides) ~ Wole Soyinka

Collected Plays 2 ~ Wole Soyinka

The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Series) ~ Wole Soyinka


The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness (The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Series) ~ Wole Soyinka

Tales of Freedom: Ben Okri's Tales of Stokus

Ben Okri


Nigeria’s celebrated literary icon Ben Okri’s The Famished Road has sold over 500, 000 copies since it won the Booker Prize for him in 1991 and rescued him from the jaws of poverty. He has been very prolific with over 8 novels, two collections of his universal poems, plays, essays and other writings making him one of the greatest black writers of all time and the next Nigerian writer most likely to win the Nobel Prize after Wole Soyinka. Okri’s latest novel Tales of Freedom is an experiment in prose and poetry that he called Stokus. But what are stokus?
Ben Okri has the answer.

"The following tales are properly 'stokus'. A stoku is an amalgam of short story and haiku. It is a story as it inclines towards a flash of a moment, insight, vision or paradox," said Okri.




Review

'Tales of Freedom may transport into regions of untold rapture' --Telegraph

'Beautifully distilled pieces of writing that are not without humour...These tiny tales are full of simple, elegant description...These word pictures span a huge range of influences and reference points, from classic literature of the twentieth century back to oral storytelling...Rarely, perhaps, has the love of ideas been expressed as simply and unpretentiously' -- Glasgow Herald

'Moments of genuine poetry and insight'
--Guardian


Book Description

As one of Britain's foremost poets, Ben Okri is rightly acclaimed for his use of language. And as a Booker Prize winning novelist, this skill was shown to particular effect in both "Starbook" (his most recent work) and in "The Famished Road". In "Tales of Freedom", he brings both poetry and story together in a fascinating new form, using writing and image pared down to their essentials, where haiku and story meet. Thus we discover Pinprop, the slave to an old couple lost in a clearing, who holds the keys to the universe in his quirky hands. Then there is the beautifully dressed black Russian on the train, helping to film a new version of 'Eugene Onegin'. Later, in the chaos of the aftermath of war, orphaned children paint mysterious shapes of bulls, birds, hybrid creatures, and we wonder if grief has unhinged them into genius...And who is that woman, who hardly speaks, who presses a tiny flower into the palm of the young boy on the bus, and then leaves his life forever? "Tales of Freedom" offers a haunting necklace of images which flash and sparkle as the light shines on them. Quick and stimulating to read, but slowly burning in the memory, they offer a different, more transcendent way of looking at our extreme, gritty world - and show the wealth of freedom that's available beyond the confines of our usual perceptions.

Birds of Heaven (Phoenix 60p paperbacks) ~ Ben Okri

Tales of Freedom ~ Ben Okri

Astonishing The Gods ~ Ben Okri

Starbook ~ Ben Okri

A Way of Being Free ~ Ben Okri

Incidents at the Shrine ~ Ben Okri

The Famished Road (Vintage Booker) ~ Ben Okri

Infinite Riches (The Famished Road) ~ Ben Okri

Mental Fight ~ Ben Okri

Dangerous Love ~ Ben Okri

Stars of the New Curfew ~ Ben Okri

An African Elegy ~ Ben Okri

In Arcadia ~ Ben Okri