Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka has formally launched his new novel, titled: “Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth” at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, published by Bookcraft Publishing, Ibadan, 48 years after his two works – The Interpreters (1965) and Season of Anomy (1973).
Equity News gathered that Soyinka has returned to prose to enable him give greater expository approach to some themes. He also narrated how it took him long to write the novel.
Also commenting on how long it took him to write the novel, the Nobel Laureate said it took him forever, adding that writing the book was a problem he dealt with for many years and he had to escape twice, first to Senegal and then to Ghana before he could concentrate on the book. He actually spent about two years to write it.
“I just could not concentrate sufficiently within these borders,” he stated.
He said, “Regarding the theme itself, the answer to that will be forever in terms of deciding. But in reality, when I have to start putting something down, I will say for two years.“
When asked if he would like the work to be seen as fiction, the author said, “I’m going to leave that to the readers to take whatever they want out of it.”
The author and political activist was called “one of the finest poetical playwrights that have written in English” by the Nobel prize.
He was held as a political prisoner in Nigeria in the 1960s, during which time he famously smuggled his poems out of prison on toilet paper.
He went into exile after his release, returning to Nigeria in 1975 but leaving again in 1994 after his passport was confiscated by Sani Abacha, the military ruler of the time.
He was sentenced to death in absentia, spending most of his exile teaching in the US.
Soyinka returned to Nigeria in 1998 after Abacha’s death, and destroyed his green card after the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
