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The lesser spotted blog

a night out in lagos

9/11/2012

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So, how were the awards?” Kennedy my publicist asked, as I staggered in from Lagos, my ears still ringing from the combined assault of continuously blaring hooters and “shake your bum-bum” being played full volume on the car radio of our affable driver and guide, Azubike.

“Fantastic,” I said. “Except for the bit when I stood on the stage before a room full of Lagos crème de la crème, in my funny pink party dress, while they read an outdated bio about me that did not even reflect my few modest achievements.”

“Did they mention me?” he asked, casually toying with his rubber crab.

“Well… actually…”

“Typical,” he muttered, with a bitterness quite unbecoming in a small dog. “If you’d bothered to take me you’d definitely have won. And then you could have bought me a lot of rubber crabs”

“I don’t think they like dogs in Lagos,” I said. “I didn’t see any. Although one guy at the award dinner was wearing them on his robes.”

“If they’d had a chance to meet me, they might have changed their minds,” he snarled (a falsetto snarl, being a Chihuahua).
PictureThe only dogs I saw in Lagos…
Anyway, the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa Award Ceremony, to give it its full title, was an astonishing event, during which I could pretend for several hours to be someone else, as a surprisingly large array of people thrust cameras in my face. (I assume they did think I was someone else, someone worth photographing. They’ll probably be quite despondent when they print out their pics and discover that I’m just a lesser spotted author, and not a rare bird of paradise.) In between the flashing cameras, and attempting (unsuccessfully) to consume my goat soup, I was roundly entertained by speeches, music and dancing from the Crown Troupe and the masked saxophonist, Lagbaja: all in all a pageant with true African flair

As for not winning, I’ve been practicing that for most of my life so I’m pretty good at it (I think my last prize was in Grade One for Good Progress, but sadly they don’t seem to give those out to grown ups). The organizers kindly told me that The Unseen Leopard put up a convincing fight for first place, beating over 400 books before losing to a worthy opponent. Sifso Mzobe’s Young Blood is a fascinating read, which scooped both the Sunday Times and the Mnet awards on its release. And I was consoled by their gratifying comments on The Unseen Leopard, reproduced below.

Besides, the Nigerians are a wonderfully embracing lot, and they all made a good show of being just as eager to be photographed with me after I proved to be not-the-winner.

What really struck me about the event was how much literature is celebrated in Nigeria. This was clearly a party that people wanted to attend, with an impressive line up of dignitaries including the ex president of Ghana; John Kufuor, Babatunde Fashola and Senator Ibikunle Amosun, Governors of Lagos and Ogun states respectively; Professor Wole Soyinka to mention just a few. The sponsors not only paid for my and Sifiso’s flights and accommodation, but also the $20 000 prize – impressive by our standards but dwarfed by Nigeria’s literature prize of $100 000. Nigeria clearly loves both books and authors, and consequently has produced a stable of very fine writers over the years.  Definitely something South Africa can learn from – our local press and bookshops still seem a lot more willing to promote overseas titles. Local novels seldom make it onto Exclusive’s New Books stand, for instance – they usually scuttle straight for the “African Fiction” shelves.

I met some hugely inspiring people, including Sifiso Mzobe, and Promise and Azubike Ogoduchukwu. Promise is an author and poet, who has done remarkable work to promote literature and reading in Africa through the Lumina Foundation  as well as running an orphanage on the side.

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With Promise Ogoduchukwu
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With Sifiso Mzobe
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 I sadly did not  meet Professor Soyinka, but I heard him speak, and was delighted to discover that he is every bit as irreverent, articulate and acerbic as his writing suggests. He spoke about the threat to the libraries of Timbuktu by what he called “these throw-backs”, and decried the “anti-human” activity going on in our continent in the name of religion.

He challenged the Nigerian government, which has been criticized for over-accommodating the Islamic fundamentalist Boko Haram, to decide whether it was on the side of the “philistines or our common humanity”.

He also condemned the trend of sharia law to relegate women to second class citizens, “stoning women for giving their bodies to whomever they please, as if anyone has the right over someone else’s body.”

Altogether a fascinating evening. And having the opportunity to experience the Lagos was something else, but more on that in another blog

The Judges:

Eid Shabbir: Professor of literature and chair of African Studies, International University of Africa, Khartoum, Sudan

Prof. Olu Obafemi: Professor of English and Dramatic Literature, UniLag

Liesle Louw: award winning journalist, South Africa

Dr Awo Asiedu: Acting Director of the School of performing Arts, University of Ghana

Jonathan Moshal: Professor of Comparative Literature, Cote D’Ivoire.

Remarks made by the judges on The Unseen Leopard

The novel is a fascinating read, gripping and the themes are universal. They are so maturely handled that one gets drawn in. The language is graceful, apt and the dialogue is brilliant. It’s a wonderfully elegant piece that works its spell on the reader. It’s really witty with a savage humour that makes the book timeless and terrific.

It is difficult to find a novel with such a rhetorical strategy that weaves nature—animals, plants, fauna, hideous caves and vast waters to portray a subject of the quest for the cause, motive, and the culprit of the death of a triangularly loved deceased. It engages the subject of capitalism and national patriotism. The language exudes lyrical beauty with a rare economy of words.

It is captivating and mature. Pitt demonstrates in this novel a competent command of language, with a text spiced with flashes of humour.




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the wole soyinka prize for literature in africa

9/3/2012

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Wole Soyinka. There’s a name for you. One of those magnificent minds of our time, a man to restore your faith in humans and remind you why you love writing, reading, and being an African.

So I was deeply honoured when heard recently that The Unseen Leopard was one of three books shortlisted for the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Although such news can a bit alarming for a lesser spotted author – I might have imagined for a moment that I could become more spotted, as it were.

However, this illusion was soon dispelled when I went into my local branch of Exclusives to purchase the two other books on the shortlist: Sifiso Mzobe’s Young Blood, and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Roses and Bullets. I fought my way past towering heaps of Fifty shades of Tripe and all its tawdry little sequels, plus a newcomer to the stable – (Fifty shades of yellow) – which seems to be about having a sadomasochistic and pornographic relationship with a cello. I didn’t expect bunting and champagne, but I thought that the shop might at least stock the shortlisted books. No. There was one copy of Young Blood (although the slip of paper inside suggested it had been ordered for someone who didn’t pitch up) but none of Unseen Leopard, or Roses and Bullets. There wasn’t even anything by Wole Soyinka.

Anyway, I haven’t let that dampen my enthusiasm. I am completely delighted to have my name associated with Soyinka’s in any capacity, even more delighted that he will be at the award ceremony to hand out the prize. Not that I am expecting to be on the other end of the prize that he is handing out, but, since the Lumina Foundation is generous enough to pay my way, I will at least be in the audience.

I first met Soyinka’s work over 30 years ago, when I was a young and eager anti-apartheid activist, and English teacher. A big part of our activism as teachers was to redefine Africa for our pupils, to free them from the stultifying and racist garbage that they encountered in their official textbooks. An important weapon in our armoury was the Heinemann African Writer’s Series, which featured works by a range of notable African authors such as Soyinka, Achebe, Ousmane Wathionga’o to mention just a few. How refreshing these books were, with their assured African voices; their revelations of the profundity and wealth of African culture; their merciless exposé of the brutality, arrogance, and hypocrisy of the colonial forces.

I used passages and poems from these in my lessons, and kept copies in my classroom for interested pupils to borrow, until the authorities became sufficiently annoyed by such subversiveness to fire me.  I then handed them out to other young activists, until they were all finally re-distributed. So I no longer have any of my original Soyinkas, although I managed to purchase his childhood memoir, Ake, which I have been rereading and absolutely relishing for its intelligent, wry and razor sharp observations.

John Updike had this to say of him:

“He is remembered in Nigeria with awe, both for a political boldness that landed him in prison and for a commanding intellect that is manifest in every genre he tackles” Hugging the Shore (New York: Knopf, 1983) pp. 683-4”

Soyinka’s intellect is indeed commanding (he presented himself to the schoolroom when he was not yet three years old, with an armful of his father’s books), and he has produced a prodigious number of plays, poems, novels and essays which led to him being the first African to win the Nobel prize for Literature in 1986. This is just one of a string of awards and honours, including the Golden Plate Award (2009) and several honorary doctorates from various institutions, including Harvard and Princetown. He has also been visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale.

Apart from his prodigious talent as a writer, Soyinka has always been a vociferous commentator on injustice. His outspoken criticism of the Nigerian government landed him in jail in 1967, where he was kept for 22 months. In the book he wrote to describe this, he said, “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny” (The Man Died (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) p. 13).

He remains a fiercely independent thinker, highly critical of dictatorships and corrupt governance in Africa, while never losing his deep love for and appreciation of African culture and philosophy. His depth of thinking and intimate knowledge has enabled him to weave a richly nuanced tapestry of contemporary African thought. As William McPheron (Standford University) said, ‘Soyinka’s discordant mixing of genres, his wilful ambiguities of meaning, his unresolved clashes of contradictions cease to be the aesthetic flaws Western critics often label them and become instead our path into an African reality fiercely itself and utterly other.’ (Stanford  Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts)

So come Friday, I’ll be on a plane to Lagos, courtesy of the Lumina  Foundation and kindly arranged by the wonderful Promise Ogochukwu. Kennedy is withholding judgement until he knows Soyinka’s views on Chiahuahuas, but I imagine they will be as reasoned, open-minded and intelligent as all his others….

Below is another quote, written nearly forty years ago, and yet so pertinent to our contemporary imperilled world, which those in power persist in treating as if it were dispensable…

“There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?”  Death and the King’s Horseman (1975); cited from Six Plays (London: Methuen, 1984) p. 189.

For more on the award, go to The Lumina Foundation.


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