Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Anglophone Writing from Africa and Asia

1973; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 47; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/40127068

2327-1302

Charles R. Larson,

Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

Nigeria: There is little doubt that, until the outbreak of the Biafran war in mid-1967, Nigerian writers dominated the African literary scene. With the Civil War, writing from Nigeria all but came to a standstill. Now, more than three years after the end of the war, these voices are beginning to be heard once again. Ibo writer, Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart (1958) and three other highly successful novels, has recently published a volume of poems, Christmas in Biafra, and a collection of short stories, Girls at War. Achebe refers to both of these works as stopgaps the only kind of writing he was able to complete during the war years when most of his energies were consumed trying to gain international sympathy for Biafra. Achebe, who has been teaching at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst this year, is once again working on another novel. Wole Soyinka, a Yoruba from Western Nigeria, has published or scheduled for publication a quartet of works which clearly distinguish him as the most versatile writer in Anglophone Africa. (Soyinka has been most widely known as a dramatist.) The first of these works, Madmen and Specialists (see BA 46:3, p. 533), a drama, focuses on the aftermath of the war in Nigeria. The second, a volume of poetry, called A Shuttle in the Crypt (see this issue, p. 407), includes a number of poems directly related to Soyinka's war experiences. The third work, The Man Died, a brilliant personal, and often brutal, narrative of Soyinka's twenty-seven-month imprisonment during the war is certain to win wide critical acclaim abroad and animosity at home. The fourth work which deals even more directly with the war than the other three is a novel (Soyinka's second) called Season of Anomy, scheduled for publication late this year or early in 1974. Other works which have dramatized the recent Nigerian unrest include a first novel by S. Okechukwu Mezu, titled Behind the Rising Sun (see this issue, pp. 406~ 407), a roman a clef, describing the activities of a group of Ibos in Europe who are trying to raise money for the purchase of military equipment for Biafra. Another novel about the war has been published by the Kenyan writer, Ali A. Mazrui. This work, called The Trial of Christopher O\igbo (see BA 47:1, p. 211), is set in After-Africa and attempts to argue, intellectually, against Okigbo's involvement in the fighting. Christopher Okigbo, who was killed in an early battle of the war, fighting for Biafra, was one of Anglophone Africa's most promising poets.