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This book contains half a dozen essays on writings by Wole Soyinka composed prior to publication of his first books in 1963. These early works reveal his precocious talent as a writer of stories, dramas, essays, letters, humorous sketches and jokes, the argument being that they cannot be dismissed as juvenilia or immature scribblings for they already exhibit an impressive command of language as well as dexterous handling of techniques of characterization and plot construction. Later essays deal with formal aspects of the plays he published between 1963 and 1973 and his subsequent experience as a theater director at home and abroad. The book concludes with an examination of the mixed Nigerian response to his Nobel Prize for Literature.In this collection of witty and perceptive essays, Lindfors brings to the fore neglected dimensions of Soyinka s genius. At once trenchantly critical and eminently readable, the essays show Lindfors drawing on his expertise in several fields, grappling with the obscure, and relishing the accessible. His inclusion of numerous quotations from the Nigerian writer enables readers to share his sense of discovery and assess the justness of his observations. James Gibbs, Professor Emeritus, University of the West of EnglandWole Soyinka is not one to tolerate hagiographers and Bernth Lindfors is not of that kind! All the better: Wole Soyinka is well served by Bernth Lindfors impeccable erudition, willingness to go into remote archives, open minded democratic spirit! Bernth Lindfors is the true literary scholar always curious, always eager to make the reader understand and appreciate! How lucky Wole Soyinka is to have had such a brilliant figure attached to him, from early times! He really got who he deserved! Alain Ricard, Research Professor, Center for the Study of Black Africa, University of Bordeaux. Author of Languages and literatures of AfricaWhen a writer such as Soyinka achieves the eminence and worldwide recognition he has, even the earliest of his writings is worth recovery. Lindfors shows how the characteristics of Soyinka s distinctive voice as a writer can be discerned even in his earliest work. This collection allows us to see how Soyinka developed from his earliest works to his mature plays and novels, and what forces shaped him on his long and often controversial journey. No reader of Soyinka can afford to ignore this work or should fail to benefit from it. Gareth Griffiths, Professor of English, University of Western Australia, Perth, AustraliaFrom the witty undergraduate Madame Etienne s Establishment to the underrated Kongi s Harvest and beyond, Bernth Lindfors offers a detailed, provocative, sometimes controversial, but always illuminating commentary on Soyinka s earlier work. This is a stimulating and admiring engagement with one of our great contemporary playwrights; a labour of love, which may well not be entirely reciprocated by its subject!. Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, The University of Leeds ... Read more

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This is a sequel to Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka's previous volumes of autobiography, "Ake" and "Isara". It tells the story of Maren, Soyinka's alter ego, as he moves from schooldays in Ibadan to student days in Leeds, stints as a play reader in London, an abortive attempt to become a cafe singer in Paris, travels to other parts of the world, and finally a post as research fellow in drama back in Ibadan. Throughout all his travels he becomes increasingly antagonistic to the corrupt authorities, opposing them firstly through writing and then by direct action. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

You need to know about post-independence politics in Nigeria
This was the first Wole Soyinka's book that I have read after the Man Died. While the Man Died won him a Nobel Prize in Literature, this novel is not far behind in it's literary composition.

Soyinka did a brilliant jobin this memoirs, at a young age of 28 yrs at the time the memoir covered,it goes to show that Soyinka was destined to be one of the greatest livingsouls of his time.

If you want to know the thinking mind of one of thegreatest dramtist of our time, this is a book you should not miss.

Ibadan is the greatest city in Africa, and this book did great justice to it.(May, 1999) ... Read more

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Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Prize laureate and Nigerian exile, has been described by The New York Times as "one of the most compelling literary voices in black Africa." This collection brings together Idanre and Other Poems and A Shuttle in the Crypt, two powerful and distinctive volumes of Soyinka's early poetry.

The first set of poems, Idanre and Other Poems, traces the author's increasingly radical political awareness and the growth of his appreciation for Africa's indigenous cultural traditions. The second set of poems, A Shuttle in the Crypt, was written by Soyinka after his arrest in 1967 by the Nigerian government for writings sympathetic to secessionist Biafra and placement in solitary confinement for twenty-two months. These poems, penned during his imprisonment, often in the dark, on cigarette packs and toilet paper, describe the loss of human contact and ponder the future of Africa continuously at war with itself.

Taken as a whole, Soyinka's early poetry may be viewed as a valiant effort to reconcile the mysterious legacy of the old with the often harsh realities of an entire continent's abrupt entry into the twentieth century. ... Read more

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Madmen and Specialists is one of Soyinka's most excoriating portrayals of abusers and abused in the new Nigeria ushered in by Biafra. Set in the "surgery" of a doctor, the play is populated by mendicants and the "insane," all fodder for "experimentation" by a shape-shifting doctor whose experiments may be more sinister than they at first appear.

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From the first African Nobel Laureate, this is the first in a series of Olufosoye Annual Lectures on Religions, delivered at the University of Ibadan in 1991. Soyinka, in his characteristically stimulating way, discusses the religions of Nigeria in their national context, and other religions from around the world. The author says "At one conceptual level or the other...deeply embedded as an article of faith, is a relegation of this material world to a mere staging-post...then universal negation...Existence, as we know it, comes to the end that was pre-ordained from the beginning of time. Indeed, time itself comes to anend." ... Read more

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A few decades ago the existence of collective fear had an immediately identifiable face - the nuclear bomb. Now it is much more complex. The fear is created by tyranny and by furtive, invisible power, the power of the quasi-state, and terrorism. For Soyinka, 11th September 2001 did not instigate the development of the climate of fear that has enveloped the world, it was in 1989 when, a few months before the Lockerbie disaster, a passenger plane was brought down by terrorists over the Republic of Niger. From Niger to Manhattan, and now to Madrid, this climate of fear has stretched to engulf the globe, warning its inhabitants that there is now no distinction between the involved or non-involved. We are all potential targets. From the fear of a terrorist with a bomb in his bag to the threat of a virus sent by a computer hacker with a lust for destruction, fear of the invisible threat is now omnipresent.In this extraordinary book, developed from the 2004 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures, Soyinka explores the changing face of fear: the conflict between power and freedom; the complex motives behind unthinkable acts of violence; the meaning of human dignity; while comparing the fanaticism of powerful terrorists with the attitude of world leaders - discovering terrifying similarities. ... Read more

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"Unquestionably Africa's most versatile writer and arguably one of her finest." (New York Times Book Review) When the Military decrees that a crime carrying a prison sentence now retroactively warrants summary execution, confusion and fear permeate a society where the brutality and injustice of military rule is parodied by life inside prison. Based on events in Nigeria in the early 1980s Wole Soyinka's stage play From Zia with Love and radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths, were produced in the early 90s when the writer was exiled by Sani Abacha's notorious and unjust military regime. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Prophetic plays
The three plays date from the early 1960s and constitute a condemnation of religious practice from three points of view.The plays are "The Swamp Dwellers," "The Trials of Brother Jero" and "The Strong Breed."

It is not clear whether the plays were written to be played against each other (they were originally published along with two others), but they share so many elements that it would be possible to diagram them as a matrix. Taking them in order, for convenience, as A, B and C, we can list the elements shared by two or more:

Disgruntled woman, B & C; stranger, A & C; water, A & C; sacrifice, A & C; leaving the village, A & C; father and son, A & C; contribution, A & B, etc.

In "The Swamp Dwellers," Igwezu loses all that is important to him and as a result rejects his village deity, a swamp god. A beggar from the north, a Muslim, also loses everything in a drought and seeks water. The little play is a riot of contrasts: swamp/desert; family/solitude; obligation/rejection; despair/hope.

The Muslim does not, unlike Igwezu, explicitly reject his religion, but by voluntarily (and mysteriously) making himself the slave of Igwezu he seems to be creating a solipsistic creed for himself alone.

The serpent-priest, Kadiye (who has everything), stands as a materialistic foil to these two.

Kidiye, though he makes a good thing out of religion is, at least, apparently a believer. Brother Jeroboam is a cheerful fraud of a prophet. "The Swamp Dwellers" is dark, and "The Strong Breed" is very dark, but "The Trials of Brother Jero" is a comic romp.

"The Swamp Dwellers" would be difficult to stage -- all of Soyinka's plays that I have read include instructions to the actors that would be next to impossible to fulfill; they are page-plays and not often performed, at least in America.

The two dark plays bookend "Brother Jero," with its cast of cheerful con artists, each presenting a variety of self-sacrificing idealists and teachers or one sort or another.

And not only self-sacrificing. Being sacrificed is not something unknown in Nigeria (the first published African novelist, Amos Tutuola, was said to be the son of a priest who had conducted human sacrifices as late as around 1910. Only about 15 years separates Tutola's unself-conscious "The Palm-wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-wine Tapster in the Dead's Town" from Soyinka'svery self-conscious plays).

Soyinka has gone a little crazy in his old age, but his plays from the `60s were prophetic: Nigeria has turned out to be as corrupt as Brother Jero, and as violent and intolerant as the villagers in "The StrongBreed." In 2007, Soyinka, looking back at the sweep of African history, said that Christianity and Islamwere responsible for much of Africa`s misery. It's been a constant theme with him.
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