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Title: Dusklands Author J.M. Coetzee Publishers: Vintage Genre: Novella Pages: 125 Year: First Published 1974 (this edition, 2004) Country: South Africa/Australia This is my first reading of a Nobel Prize Winner and I wasn't disappointed. Duskland consist of two novelettes: The Vietnam Project and The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee. THE VIETNAM PROJECT: This novelette was written or narrated in the first person and set during the Vietnam war. A psychologist Eugene Dawn developed a novel psychological war strategy to be used to win the remaining phases of the war. Having been asked by his supervisor, Coetzee, to revise his propaganda, Eugene criticised himself so much that he was overtaken by the stress of the work and finally ceded to a mental breakdown. It is an interesting novelette and shows that the casualties of war are not only those whose bones fill the belly of the earth but include those whose mental constitution succumbs to the stress of war...

THE YEAR OF LITERARY WOMEN WITH INITIALS H.M. Over the week, two prestigious literary awards were announced, the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize, and both were won by women whose initials were coincidentally identical. The Nobel Prize in Literature was won by Herta Muller , a German Romanian. Her choice has caused a stir in the literary circles as people are perceiving the awards to be too Eurocentric judging from the fact that the last time an American won it was in 1993 and Asians hardly ever win. On the other Hilary Mantel  has won the Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall, which had J.M. Coetzee's Summertime in the shortlist. This award has been accepted by all and none has as yet complained. You can read also read about these at here and there ... THE SHOCKER AWARDS Whilst I have consistently insisted on the abundance of literary talents in Nigeria, the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Awards for Literature held this Saturday October 10, 2009, saw ...

Title: Arrow of God Author: Chinua Achebe Genre: Novel (Religious, Life, Dystopian) Publishers: Heinemann (African Writers Series) Pages: 230 Year: 1964 (this edition 1986) Country: Nigeria This is the last of the African Trilogy by Chinua Achebe. Unlike Things Fall Apart and No Longer At Ease , Arrow of God was set in Umuaro in the years of the colonial period but some years after the Okonkwo era. It has very little to do with Okonkwo, except with the mention of the novel The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger , written by the District Commissioner and a slight reference to some incidents during  Okonkwo's era. All the same, one common thread that runs through all these novels is the clash between the coming of Christianity and the Traditional beliefs system and the complicity of the people in the former. However, Arrow of God tells more than just the clash between beliefs. It tells also of how one man's quest for vengeance...

In the Ice Age: stone tool research; hunting techniques fruit-picking technology; story telling In the Nuclear Rage: stem cell research; genetic engineering space technology; nanotechnology —the robotic lobotomy of our prefrontal brain a manipulation of the mind away from reasoning In the laboratories, a father fathers his daughter’s children another slaughters his loins and a mother murders her 6-month old baby because the presumed father refused responsibility or perhaps there is no father the bridge, a suicide zone for teenagers who would, some years ago be playing ampe and hide-and-seek in the Town-Square The skyscrapers tower our senses and the bridge between sense and nonsense dissolves amidst the cityscape —a remnant of the mental mutilation and the circumcision of the land The limbic brain has gradually been realigned with rage and with our complex unfathomable selves alone in the darkness in line with the insidious shrinking of kinship and the circumcision of the mind and the ...

Henry Ajumeze is a Nigerian poet and a proud citizen of Anioma. He was born in he Delta State of Nigeria and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre Arts from the University of Calabar. His poems have been published in art pages of most Nigerian newspapers and international literary journals and in anthologies such as 'For Ken, For Nigeria', an anthology that was edited by award-winning novelist E.C. Osondu .  Last month his collection of poetry titled Dimples on the Sand was published and has been reviewed on this blog. #1: Can you tell us something about yourself; your background both in literature and out of it...where you went to school and all that? I was born in Ibusa, a town in Anioma region in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. I am enamoured of the history of my ancestors who fought the British and Royal Niger Company in the Ekumeku war for over 12 years. I am impelled to celebrate my ancestors, their chivalry in the Ekumeku Movement, my land--from the farm groove of Ng...

Title: No Longer At Ease Author: Chinua Achebe Genre: Novel (Life, Transition) Publishers: Heinemann (African Writers Series) Pages: 154 ISBN:978-0-435913-51-9 Year: 1960 (this edition, 2008) Country: Nigeria No Longer At Ease  is the second book in a series of books, which have come to be called the African Trilogy. It was set in Lagos, Nigeria within the period prior to independence. In this novel, Chinua Achebe merges the traditional with the modern, creating a story that tells of the genesis of corruption and the culture of demand. The plot deals with how the culture of expectation leads to corruption and decadence of the individual and the institutions they work for. This story is similar to Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments   and fits a quote in Amu Djoleto's novel The Strange Man : "Convention and conformity are the foundation stones of decadence". Obi Okonkwo, son of Isaac Okonkwo (or Nwoye) and grandson of Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart , had...

At the meeting of my poetry reading club, The Talk Party, a consensus was reached that poetry should not necessarily be indirect and there is nothing profane in poetry. As a result I have decided to post a poem I wrote so many years ago but which I have scarcely taken out for people to read. Here I am posting it for the first time on blogspot and for the second time on any social site. Rooted at the intersection Of the double flapping doors At the entrance strewn with the nectar Of sweet-scented straggling roses Is the Concierge of the Dewy Garden of Even Shivering, yet supinely erect The sensuous concierge ushers in In grumbles and murmurs And in deluge of fast-paced paroxysms The Adonis of this florid flexuous Gothic sepulchral catacomb Which had singularly caused The downfall of greater nations And chosen men of greater faith Slipping past the concierge In lecherous arrogance, Through the gooey squirting nectar Frictionless, but fitting fully and ...