Soyinka at 86 – Part 3

Last week I began giving an account of Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s latest work, a 500-page behemoth of a novel titled Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth. However many strokes of brilliance this work contains, I was making the case it is way too long and hopelessly overwritten. There is also some evidence that the origins of the work lie in a personal feud in Soyinka’s private life—that he is settling old scores—but I don’t want to go into that.

Soyinka’s acid satire builds up over the first few pages of Chronicles, with a reference to a Ministry of Happiness, one function of which is “the constant exponential creation of chieftaincy titles”, a process that necessitates “the generation of carnivals almost as a daily event, enabling the growth of tourism, and a boom in the complementary industry of kidnapping for ransom.” This, however, builds up into a 15-page set piece, and there are points at which one’s eyes glaze over, only to be jolted open again by the next cunning wisecrack.

The first entry of one of the central characters is deferred until p53, with the appearance of Duyole Pitan-Payne, “engineer and acknowledged leader of the eccentric Gong of Four” (and yes, that is gong, not gang, for reasons I don’t have space to explain). As a further example of his over-saucing of his material, never using one word when he can find a dozen, on Duyole’s meeting with Prophet Davina, whom we bumped into at the beginning of the novel, Soyinka elaborates:

“He completed the remaining sixteen steps up the pebbled slope, glossed by myriad feet in the quest for a cure, a fulfilment, search for, or celebration of a preferment, a simple remedy for any of the catalogue of human woes, cravings and inadequacies” (one is reminded how, in David Leavitt’s novel Martin Baumann, an editor distributes a memo to her staff regarding unsolicited submissions received by the magazine, which classifies “myriad” as one of the words “not to read beyond”).

With the entry of the second of the Gong of Four, the surgeon Menka, Soyinka has an opportunity to explore the grimmest depths of contemporary Nigerian experience, as the medic repairs the bodies of casualties of Boko Haram and that of an eight year old “housemaid”, the victim of serial rape by a businessman and his 19 year old son.

At just over the 300-page mark there is an explosion at Duroye’s house. Here something like a conventional (thriller-type) plot emerges, something like suspense and even briskness. When Duroye is freighted off to Austria for neuro-surgery, the chaotic scene at the airport is very funny; when his wife’s wishes are later discounted—“She counted for nothing”—the cruelties Soyinka recounts are unspeakable.

Menka the surgeon comes from a village called Gumchi, where the Prime Minister’s favourite kola nuts are harvested. In a delightful twist near the end of the novel, the nuts are discovered to contain edible gold, suggesting the region is suitable for mining. A brilliant final plot twist that has to do with cryptology (with three words that contain exactly the same letters but in a different order) almost makes the 500 page haul through Chronicles seem worthwhile.

The publisher of the novel, Bookcraft, is situated in Ibadan, Nigeria, and the hardback edition they have produced is one of the most handsome this reviewer has come across in years. No printer is cited; one suspects the physical production of the book may have been carried out in Singapore or some similar high-tech printing centre.

he ancient art of proof-reading has not, however, been brought into play. Throughout the novel there are dozens of typos and other minor errors. While his stamina and verve are not in doubt, maybe Soyinka’s attention to detail is beginning to wane.

Chronicles is, however, inescapable reading for anyone with an interest in Nigeria as the powerhouse of African writing (and I am using the word “inescapable” here with its connotations of imprisonment, and moreover of a long-term sentence).

Chris Dunton