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A review by fiendfull
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka
3.0
Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People On Earth is a sprawling tale of corruption, religion, and power in Nigeria, as longtime friends discover a strange plot selling body parts. Duyole Pitan-Payne is an engineer and rising star who has just had an audience with the Prime Minister, but when his old friend Dr Menka gets in touch using their old code, something seems to be wrong. Menka is exhausted from the horrors he has seen as a surgeon, but he's just found out a new one: body parts are being stolen from the hospital for sale. Soon a story of power and corruption unravels, but the truth might be close to home.
This is a book that takes time to get into, as the opening chapters jump about in character and focus, and I wasn't sure if the narrative would settle into a particularly clear narrative, despite the length of the book. However, after a while it does focus on Dr Menka mostly, making it easier to keep track of what was going on, though there were still a few plot points (including exactly what was going on with the body parts) that I found confusing. The third person narrative voice occasionally moves from focusing on the action or flashbacks to a broader explanatory tone that satirises various political and national happenings in the book, but mostly it follows the mystery of what is going on in Menka and Pitan-Payne's lives.
Once I got into it, the story was good, a witty look at corruption and influence, though it did get a bit meandering at times due to its length (particularly a section about whether or not someone is buried in Austria or Nigeria, which went on for a long time). Some of the satire probably passed me by, especially as I don't tend to read a huge amount of political satire, but the overall narrative came together well and it had a satisfying ending that I hadn't guessed.
This is a book that takes time to get into, as the opening chapters jump about in character and focus, and I wasn't sure if the narrative would settle into a particularly clear narrative, despite the length of the book. However, after a while it does focus on Dr Menka mostly, making it easier to keep track of what was going on, though there were still a few plot points (including exactly what was going on with the body parts) that I found confusing. The third person narrative voice occasionally moves from focusing on the action or flashbacks to a broader explanatory tone that satirises various political and national happenings in the book, but mostly it follows the mystery of what is going on in Menka and Pitan-Payne's lives.
Once I got into it, the story was good, a witty look at corruption and influence, though it did get a bit meandering at times due to its length (particularly a section about whether or not someone is buried in Austria or Nigeria, which went on for a long time). Some of the satire probably passed me by, especially as I don't tend to read a huge amount of political satire, but the overall narrative came together well and it had a satisfying ending that I hadn't guessed.