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Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu  (UP PLC, 2006; 78) is considered a re-reading of Euripides' The Trojan Women . The story is about the plight of the women in a defeated town. Oyo mercenaries and warriors from the tribes of Ijebu and Ife had surrounded the city of Owu, on the premise that they were there to liberate the people from their oppressive King. After 7 years of siege, the walls finally gave and the allied forces entered. Sparing none, they killed all men and children and some women. For majority of the women, the leader of the forces and his followers made whores and wives out of them.  The story discusses how the gods of the Owu people deserted them and the major reason for the invasion. It was clear that the wife of the leader of the combined forces had been captured and married to the King of Owu, in an earlier military campaign against the the Oyo people; this loss transformed the artist husband into a military commander and hence this attack. The other reason...

Nowadays, when the strong fight the weak, it's called a Liberation War to free the weak from oppression. [8] Nowadays, in the new world, it is suicide to be weak. [8] I ask you- without a shrine, without worshippers, what is a god? [9] Some words are such that when we hear them, all the light inside us dies at once, and our smiling daylight turns into the bleakness of night. [27] I lit the torch so I will not have to grope my way to the camp where I shall be married to my enemy, that handsome butcher of our people. [27-8] The gods! Which gods! Do you still trust any of them after this? Or have you quickly forgotten what they told us about Anlugbua just now? No, women, there is no shelter anywhere but in ourselves! Each of us has become our own god. [33] Happiness is a fake. The gods employ it as a mask to trick us each time they are about to plunge us into grief. [37] Don't speak like that, my child. Death is sweet, we think. But it is easier to tal...