Dying Stars…A Review
Emeka Agbayi. Stars Die. Lagos, Nigeria. Hybun Publications International, 2004. Pp. 73 The title of Emeka Agbayi?s poetry collection, Stars Die, and the beautiful cover illustration, two hanged...
View ArticleSong of a Riverbird…A Review
Lola Shoneyin, Song of a Riverbird. Lagos, Nigeria: Ovalonion House, 2002. 72pp In 1998, Lola Shoneyin published her first poetry collection, So All the Time I was Sitting on an Egg. With this...
View ArticleIn Defense of Simplicity of Language in Nigerian Narratives
Contemporary Nigerian narratives have awakened some renewed international interests in the past few years after the hiatus that followed Ben Okri’s Booker Prize winning novel, The Famished Road. Part...
View ArticleThe Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature and the Nigerian Love of Exclusion
The Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, awarded biennially, is, to many, the most prestigious prize of the fiction genre in Africa. Touted as “Africa’s NOBEL prize,” it is supposed to earn the...
View ArticleThoughts on the Nigerian Mentality: Combative Mode
A few days ago, some friends and I exchanged ideas on the nature of the Nigerian mentality, part of whose characteristic is mob-temper. That left me thinking wildly and asking questions. Are we...
View ArticleAfrica’s elite and the Western media
Greek mythology has it that Sisyphus, once the king of Ephyra (Corinth), was condemned by the gods to roll a big chunk of stone up a steep hill. Whenever he reached up the top, the stone tumbled back....
View ArticleOn Writing, Prizes and the Nigerian Mind
In the interview granted to The Guardian, Mr. Samuel Kolawole suggested that Nigerian literary works that win prizes abroad are culturally irrelevant to Nigeria because they are not patriotic. They are...
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