11 minute read
in 50 years
Long time in the making
Author Wole Soyinka gives a personal insight into his new novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, which he admits has taken him decades to write and to publish
BY JOEL CAMPBELL
WE HAVE COVID to thank for the B l o o m s b u r y published Wole Soyinka novel Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, the author’s first book for 48 years.
Talking to lifestyle, Soyinka said that this book had been brewing inside him for decades, but he’d never had the time to pull it together, until lockdown.
ACTIVIST
In fact, Africa’s first Nobel Laureate, author, playwright, poet and political activist said there were three separate instances over the last few years that have allowed him to focus his thoughts enough to get it done.
He explained: “This book has been with me for quite a while, I’ve expressed the contents in various forms.
“One or two instances in poetry, in plays, dramatic sketches and the real motivation is just watching the environment decay and people getting lost, so you virtually fantasise what is the next, which direction of the development of the present actualities blossom, and that’s where fictionalising comes in.
“So it was not a new book as such, it’s been with me for quite a few decades and I was at the point where I must move from playwrights, poetry etc into a real compact yet diffused exposition of my environment.”
He added: “When I say I have been writing this book for decades, I mean the book has been summoning me, and from time to time I have been contemplating something along those lines.
“I should explain that one of the ironies of the book is that I needed a period of concentration outside of the environment that gave birth to it, and I didn’t have it. “If I was outside of the country it was either I was fighting some dictator, mobilised all over the world on all levels, I’m talking about Sani Abacha, for instance, but I never really found time to sit down and say I am excluding everything else, until a couple of years ago. “ T h a t was when a young colleague of mine lent me his cottage in Senegal, just outside Dakar, and I was able to sit down and really concentrate and focus my mind on this fictional twin.
“I was there about eight days and then there was a long break again until I found another sanctuary, this time it was Ghana, marvellous, luxurious, where I was able to expend about eight to ten days of absolute concentration.
“Then there was another break and then came COVID which locked me down in Nigeria, and that’s how I was able to finally deal with these demons which had been taunting me and clouding my existence and others too, but I am talking personally, when I use me as the receptacle of all this negative, but it’s general.” HORROR
In the book, much to Doctor Menka’s horror, some cunning entrepreneur has decided to sell body parts from his hospital for use in ritualistic practices.
Already at the end of his tether from the horrors he routinely sees in surgery, he shares this latest development with his oldest college friend, bon viveur, star engineer and Yoruba royal, Duyole Pitan-Payne, who has never before met a puzzle he couldn’t solve. Neither realise how close the enemy is, nor how powerful.
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth is at once a savagely witty whodunit, a scathing indictment of Nigeria’s political elite and a provocative call to arms from one of the country’s most relentless political activists and an international literary giant.
Born in Nigeria in 1934, Soyinka’s prolific body of work includes debut novel The Interpreters and play Death and the King’s Horseman.
Soyinka fought in the Nigerian war of independence and has subsequently been one of the greatest critics of the Nigerian government.
Having trekked to South Africa with a view to joining the RESPECTED: Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka; inset below left, Soyinka reads an original poem written for children at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in 2019
army of voices opposed to the apartheid regime earlier in his life, Soyinka explained that there was a moment of realisation that issues in his own country of birth were far more important to him.
“Upon returning home we found that the problems internally were quite serious. The participated in, as the whole world did at that time, but along the way our problems became greater, more immense, deeper, more profound than it’s reached in more recent times, to skip some generations, to us watching our humanity deteriorate.
“Until now, today, as I keep
stressing, virtually a new slave era has been inaugurated and the commodity of that is largely youths, school pupils.
“I see no difference, for instance, in taking kids, kidnapping kids for ransom from schools along a road for commercial transportation and holding them until they are bought back by their parents, by their institutions and sometimes by their states, I see no difference between that and our experience of the slave trade of being enslaved as people.
“I’m summarising, of course, I’m talking about what most depresses me as a human being, as a citizen, as a parent and that is what Chronicles is about.”
first-generation leaders saw themselves quite literally as neo-imperialists in black skin.”
He added: “They conducted themselves worse sometimes than what we had been fighting.
“So the problem, the fight, become internal. We watched ourselves deteriorate and we watched the problems of apartheid in South Africa that we
CONFINEMENT
Twice jailed, he wrote part of his memoir on toilet paper in solitary confinement.
Soyinka still isn’t completely sure about how the longest of those stints affected him, but talking about how he coped, he said: “It was a strange and of course unique experience for me at the time.
“To be shut away from humanity except of course those who come to feed you who were under orders not to talk to you, to be shut away like that,
22 months out of 27 altogether, was not easy.
“Of course, you learn to cope, to create your own micro world, you populate it with creatures of your imagination making sure you’re not dragged down to a non-physical world because there is always that danger you live so much in your mind that you can get too used to it.
“You can get to the stage where you are hallucinating, misreading environment etc, but you pull yourself back and then you reconcile yourself. MERRIMENT
“So, this is my home, my world, my merriment until I see other things. I think it’s the only way to cope in that kind of situation, not to think at all about regaining your liberty.
“Two things happen when you’re locked away on your own. As I said earlier, you shut out the world but when you regain your liberty I think two things can happen, one; you become so accustomed to withdrawal that you have learned to take it as your reality and you want to continue along that line.
“Or you become almost evangelical that you want to plunge yourself back into the mainstream to see that this doesn’t happen again, you don’t want this to happen to other people because you know it’s not a real way of developing your mind, of being a full citizen, so it can go either way.
“In my own case I’m not sure which way it went because all I can say is I found myself back again, back again to the same struggle, back to the same commitment, perhaps even fervently so, and committed again to that phase of your maturation when you were a student and the whole world of possibilities were open.
“In other words, you regain some of your creative pragmatism. I avoided the word optimism because that is not easy, but you regain that creative pragmatism in which you can still utilise the resources to hand.”
In chapter one of Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth readers are introduced to Papa D and a seeker. Referred to as a magician and an Apostle, did Soyinka see himself in either of the two intriguing characters?
Who was Soyinka in 2021?
“I think for one who is a survivor you should have a bit of both.
CRIMINAL
“I think that the writer goes into every work of art, including painting. A bit of the artist goes into the work, whether one likes it or not.
“For instance, I find it a gift that I am able to enter the mind of a criminal, and I enjoy entering the mind of a criminal, perhaps because I also see the potential in me, but I somehow didn’t go that way.
“But I am able to enter that world, cope with that world and counter it.
“Someone once said to me I have the mind of a policemen, I said ‘you’re right, maybe I have’, that’s what makes me a writer.” MAN FOR ALL SEASONS:
Africa’s first Nobel Laureate, author, playwright, poet and political activist, Wole Soyinka; below, Soyinka’s
Clementina’s sweet book arrival gives kids the power they need to thrive and succeed
BY JOEL CAMPBELL
CLEMENTINA ELBA has been teaching early years kids at school for two decades and it was a lack of affirmative text within the plethora of available children’s books in the UK school curriculum that spurred her onto write her latest book I Am The Possibility.
Having already whet her pen with her first book, I Am Enough, under her own company Black Boy Magic Limited, Elba, a mother and business women, is on a mission to ‘empower children so much, that they’re so self-assured that nothing can interfere with their focus and where they are going.’ “I love t e a c h i n g the early y e a r s , ” Elba told Lifestyle. She added: “My b a b i e s (I teach) are three to fivey e a r s o l d , t h a t ’ s what I have been doing for the past 20 years and my book is called I Am The Possibility and it goes on a journey of siblings, black boys, black girls.
“The boy has vitiligo like my son does. He’s like, ‘mum that’s me’. I was like, yes it is, it’s based on you. INTERFERE
“But it’s showing them what they can be when you don’t let the world’s noise interfere with who you have been created to be.
“It goes through a visualisation process of different career choices; it goes through just believing in themselves.
“It goes through understanding that the possibility lives within them and not externally, and the validation comes from within them as well.
“So, at the back we have incorporated some colouring sheets as well, just to promote fine motor skills, hands-eye coordination and they are surrounded by affirmations as well. They are affirming their greatness at the same time.”
I Am The Possibility was written during lockdown, “time created that I always thought I didn’t have,” Elba explained. She added: “So because of what we do in early years, because our focus is so much on building children’s self-esteem, self-worth, their values systems, I was like, but what can we do to embed this throughout the curriculum?
“I am blessed enough to have a really supportive school so everything that I have created is embedded within my school curriculum, and eight other schools have my book already. “I don’t know how all of this has happened.” Elba’s book will be available from October 16. It’s the culmination of a journey she never envisioned, but one that feels right. “My journey of becoming an author was literally from March until August because I then brought my book out on August 1. “It wasn’t like other people, it felt really like I birthed something inside of me because I have been doing the work that I’m trying to do with families with teachers, I’ve been doing that process.
“Along the way I birthed a new talent inside of me and I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t afraid to put myself out there as I would have been before.”
Search @ourfamilymagic on Facebook for more information.
Where there’s a Will ...
BY JOEL CAMPBELL
ONE MORE book to look out for on the store shelves is Will by Will Smith.
N e x t m o n t h sees the memoir by the twotime Academy Award n o m i n e e , G r a m m y Award and NAACP Image Award winner .
In Will, one of the most dynamic and g l o b a l l y r e c o g n i s ed entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about his life, tracing his learning curve to a place where outer success, inner happiness and human connection are aligned. Along the way, Will tells the story in full of one of the most amazing rides through the worlds of music and film that anyone has ever had.
The book was written with the help of Mark Manson, author of multi-million bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.
