| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9780195119213 | | Publisher: 101 Productions | | Publish Date: 4/10/2007 | | Buy.com Sku: 30024722 | | Item#: RM7KM6 | | Dimensions (in Inches) 8.25H x 5.25L x 0.5T |
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| | | The events that led up to dissident writer Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution in 1995 marked Nigeria's decline from a post-colonial success story to its current military dictatorship. Wole Soyinka, whose own Nigerian passport was confiscated by the Nigerian military in 1994, explores the history and future of Nigeria in a compelling jeremiad that is as intense as it is provocative, learned, and wide-ranging.
Annotation:
As the strong image of the title suggests, Wole Soyinka does not mince words with this depiction of the state of Nigeria and the continent of Africa near the turn of the 21st century. Soyinka expresses his rage and frustration with the repetitive failures of Nigerian cabinets and governments, which culminated in 1993 when the dictator Ibrahim Babangida annulled the results of a semi-democratic election in order to maintain power. While much of the world considers Nigeria to be a rising international power, due to its rapidly accelerating population, Soyinka counters that his nation is more likely on the verge of extinction, due to irreconcilable political turmoil. He calls for a campaign of civil disobedience, and the formation of a "ground-up" government, rather than the "top-down" dictatorships which have marred the country's history since independence.
| PraiseEmerge
"An important book and absolutely essential in understanding the crisis that faces not just Nigeria, but Africa as a whole." - Siga Fatima JagneNew York Times Book Review
"By the last page of Mr. Soyinka's book, I felt myself both enriched and exhausted....Though a short book, 'Open Sore of a Continent' is crammed with vivid observations that will add life to moribund academic debates over national identity. Its narrative is applicable not only to postcolonial Nigeria but to the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union as well." - Robert D. Kaplan Nation
"Imagine a U. S. writer with the strengths of Gerlad Early, Ishmael Reed and Adolph Reed Jr. chronicling our political underbelly from Nixon to Iran/contra and the S&L swindles, through the desert storm massacre up the Patriot movement and the counterterrorism bill, naming names and heaping scorn where scorn is due, not flinching from the most terrifying implications of the connections he makes and describing the toll on our character--then you will see what Soyinka has done for Nigeria." - Chris King 08/12/1996 Booklist
"the sting of his lashing wit, depth of his profound knowledge, heat of his rage, and beauty of his eloquence are all evident in this instructive and bracing jeremiad." Boston Book Review
'The Open Sore', a very important work, explores areas that the social scientist only glimpses askance and names conditions that the economist obfuscates with daunting statistical information....Reading Soyinka gives a human face to such a decline and grants grater reality to the many atrocities that appear in the news so often." - Selwyn R. Cudjoe September 1996 |
| Author Bio| Wole Soyinka | | Wole Soyinka was educated at the universities of Ibadan and Leeds, England. After he received his Ph.D. in 1973, he spent two years as a dramaturge at the Royal Court Theatre, then returned to Nigeria to teach. He also founded the 1960 Masks, a theater group. In 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, the first African to win the award. Soyinka has been imprisoned many times for his outspoken denunciation of Nigeria's late dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, and his regime's human rights abuses. In 1994 he went into exile after learning that Nigerian authorities sought his arrest him for speaking against their military rule. In October 1998 he returned to Nigeria under police guard. |
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