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A review by seeceeread
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka
4.0
💠"It seemed to him that he had forgotten how to laugh and now a funeral was teaching him how to be human once again."
Decades ago, four men grew close, a "gang of four" at college. Today, they compete for a prized place as the nation's most influential. We closely track half: Dr. Menka, whose surgical work on victims of Boko Haram has earned him an award, and Duyole Pitan-Payne, an engineer bound for the United Nations. They discover a local market in human flesh, then suddenly, Duyole is attacked. Menka struggles to understand his friend's family, battling them to get him care, then to plan a proper funeral and repatriate the remains. And even as the doctor tries to leverage his new national status, he is thwarted by murky, powerful players.
The satire is not subtle. Yet Soyinka's style buries an unmarked, weed-stricken, ne'er-tended plot. He names, renames, metaphorically references and then abandons character and setting (for now) ... all wrapped in low-frequency vocab and layers of cultural allusion. The payoff that closes the construction wasn't satisfying, though the writing is a testament to the elasticity of English and a journey unto itself.
Decades ago, four men grew close, a "gang of four" at college. Today, they compete for a prized place as the nation's most influential. We closely track half: Dr. Menka, whose surgical work on victims of Boko Haram has earned him an award, and Duyole Pitan-Payne, an engineer bound for the United Nations. They discover a local market in human flesh, then suddenly, Duyole is attacked. Menka struggles to understand his friend's family, battling them to get him care, then to plan a proper funeral and repatriate the remains. And even as the doctor tries to leverage his new national status, he is thwarted by murky, powerful players.
The satire is not subtle. Yet Soyinka's style buries an unmarked, weed-stricken, ne'er-tended plot. He names, renames, metaphorically references and then abandons character and setting (for now) ... all wrapped in low-frequency vocab and layers of cultural allusion. The payoff that closes the construction wasn't satisfying, though the writing is a testament to the elasticity of English and a journey unto itself.