Soyinka at 86 – Part 2

No gainsaying, Soyinka’s stamina remains formidable. In November last year he published a novel, Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth, that runs to 500 pages. Your favourite columnist (that’s me, folks!) has a copy of the novel, imported from Nigeria at a cost to the dwindling Dunton bank balance of nearly M2000. As none of my readers is likely to lay their hands on a copy until a more easily accessible paperback appears, I shall talk about it at some length. The title of the novel deserves comment. It is drawn from an entry in The Book of Nigerian Facts, which states that “a 2003 study of over 65 countries suggested that the happiest and most optimistic people in the world live in Nigeria.” One has always imagined that when that entry in The Book of Nigerian Facts was composed, the compilers were holding their data sheet upside-down. Then there is the use of the word “chronicle.” This is generally applied to an account of events arranged in chronological order, usually without much in the way of analysis or interpretation. Examples would be the two Old Testament books thus named, which largely have to do with begetting, or the mostly dry-as-dust historical record, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, only a couple of livelier sections of which are regularly studied as literature. Soyinka’s novel is, however, laden with sufficient analysis and interpretation to sink a battleship. Certainly there are many instances of deft humour. When, for example, one of the central characters waits for hours to be admitted to his appointment with the Prime Minister (His Excellency the People’s Steward)—with various aides and cleaners flitting in and out of the ante-room—Soyinka comments: “He was beginning to feel like Alice in Wonderland.” For metre after metre of text, however, the sheer heaviness of Soyinka’s account becomes cloying. The blurb to the novel comments: “Soyinka has woven the story of contemporary Nigeria into the tapestry of the lives of four friends whose lives are convulsed by the vagaries and intrigues of public life.” The work opens, however, with a Seeker’s audience with Papa Davina, a prophet—this in a country that is notorious for its prosperity ministries, the main purpose of which is to milk money from their congregations. The prophet holds forth in a speech that suggests an interesting twist to the theory of entropy and energy: “There are many, including our fellow citizens, who describe this nation as one vast dung-heap. But you see, those who do, they mean to be disparaging. I, by contrast, find happiness in that. If the world produces dung, the dung must pileup somewhere. So if our nation is indeed the dung-heap of the world, it means we are providing a service to humanity.” To be concluded Chris Dunton