Ekwensi one particular of Africa's most prolific writers who died late final year and was buried early this year, maintained a vibrant writing activity all through his life, publishing a collection of quick stories, Money On Delivery, his final operate of fiction and finishing perform on his memoirs, titled, In My Time for many years on to his death. With more than twenty novels, collections of stories and brief novels to his name, Ekwensi's thematic preoccupation equally covered the Nigerian Civil War from the viewpoint of a journalist and life in a pastoral Fulani setting in Northern Nigeria.
Ekwensi's initial published function was the novella, While Enjoy Whispers, published in 1948, ten years ahead of the terrific African novel, Achebe's Issues Fall Apart, appeared in London. He was inspired by sorrow more than his unsuccessful try to court a young lady whose father insisted that she tends to make a marriage of comfort to write it. This brief, light romance formed part of what became identified as the Onitsha Market place college of pulp fiction, and its success inspired Ekwensi to continue in that exact same mode.
Ekwensi had currently distinguished himself by the numerous quick stories he had written for broadcast on radio. Those he later place collectively, inside ten days, when on his way to Chelsea College of Pharmacy, London, to recognize his initially novel, Persons of the City, which Nigeria's premier newspaper, The Each day Occasions, published in installments just before it appeared in book form in 1954. Yet which was not published in the United States till 15 years later. Persons of the City (1954) was the initially West African novel in modern day fashion English to be published in England. It really is publication as a result marked an crucial improvement in African literature with Ekwensi getting one particular of the initial African novelists to acquire a great deal exposure in the West and ultimately the most prolific African novelist.
The reality that Cyprian Ekwensi began his writing profession as a pamphleteer is reflected in the episodic nature of Individuals of the City (1954) a collection of stories strung with each other Yet reading Enjoy a novel, in which he offers a vibrant portrait of the speedy-paced life in a West African city, Lagos. People today of the City which recounts the coming to political awareness of a young reporter and band leader in an emerging African nation is filled with his operating commentary on the troubles of bribery and corruption and despotism bedeviling such states. In it and a number of other folks, Ekwensi explores the lure, thrills and troubles of urban life, and the intense permissiveness and impersonal relationships permeating the lives of migrants to the city, exactly where close-ties typically fostered by the long loved ones program of their classic societies constitute a really serious verify on the deviant lifestyles that discover complete expression in the city.
According to, Bernth Lindfors, none of Ekwensi's many operates is totally no cost from amateurish blots and blunders. Lindfors thus concludes that he may not call any "the handiwork of a cautious, specialist craftsman." On his portrayal of the moral irresponsibility in city life, Bernth Lindfors, argued that "since his sinful heroines typically come to undesirable ends, Ekwensi can be deemed a significant moralist whose novels offer instruction in virtue by showing the tragic consequences of vice. Yet it usually appears as if he is much more interested in the vice than in the virtue and that he aims to titillate as effectively as teach." Even though this view might be contested, It really is undeniable that he generally strove tough to attain his audience in the most instant and intimate fashion. Certainly, it was to maintain this that he clung to these themes that afforded him the mass readership he so a great deal craved
In a 1972 interview by Lewis Nkosi, Ekwensi defined his part as writer as a result: "I believe I am a writer who regards himself as a writer for the masses. I do not believe of myself as a literary stylist: if my fashion comes, that is just incidental, However I am much more interested in finding at the heart of the fact which the man in the street can realize than in just spinning words."
Ernest Emenyonu, a Nigerian critic noted for his sympathy towards Ekwensi, charges that Ekwensi "has don't been appropriately assessed as a writer."
A further sympathetic critic,the lengthy-standing American convert to the read of African Literature, Charles Larson, describes him as a single of the most prolific African writers of the twentieth century. According to Larson, Ekwensi "is almost certainly the most broadly-read novelist in Nigeria--possibly even in West Africa--by readers whose literary tastes have not been exposed to the much more complicated writings of Chinua Achebe and other far more specialist African novelists."
Kole Omotoso past President of Nigerian Association of Authors and Drama professor at University of Ibadan confessed a lifelong fascination with him following reading his novelette The Yaba Round Around Murder as a kid, for, as he confesses, it taught him the significance of space in writing fiction. Omotoso goes on to state that Ekwensi's key value in Nigerian writing is due to the fact he believed in himself and 'created us assume in ourselves.' The pan-Africanist slant of his writings and his publications getting largely in Nigeria had been discovered commendable. Whilst various other African writers had been in self-exile, he chose to stay in his native nation, rather than live abroad exactly where publishing possibilities are much more abundant.
Even though some scholars discounted Ekwensi's novels, other people valued their social realism. Charles R. Larson place his function in historical viewpoint: "Regional colour is their forte, irrespective of whether it be Ekwensi's city of chaos, Lagos, or Onitsha ... ; the Nigerian reader is placed for the 1st time in a point of view which has been previously unexplored in African fiction."
Putting Ekwensi's operate firmly in the common idiom, Douglas Killam explained their significance: "Well known fiction is often essential as indicating current well known interests and morality. Ekwensi's operate is redeemed (though not saved as art) by his really serious concern with the moral Points which inform modern day Nigerian life. As such they will constantly be relevant to Nigerian literary history and to Nigerian tradition."
Ekwensi told stories that, Appreciate properly-cooked onugbu (bitter leaf) soup, left a pleasant right after-meal tang on the palate. By means of his operates Ekwensi told us that a function of fiction does not deserve that honourable name if it does not at initially sight-...-arrest the reader Enjoy a cop's handcuffs..... I read several of Ekwensi's books, and save for 'The Drummer Boy', which was a suggested text although I was in junior secondary college in Plateau State, the other people had been read for the reason that they are what a book-hungry soul demands for sustenance. Who can, finding been initiated into the cult of Ekwensi, overlook the revenge-driven Mallam Iliya, the sokugo-stricken Mai Sunsaye, the skirt-besotted Amusa Sango, the raunchy belle, Jagua Nana (they never write girls Adore that any far more, no matter whether in fiction, on the telly, and possibly in real life); and the heart-rending Ngozi and heroic Pedro? They are my close friends for life.
Ekwensi did a lot over write 'airport thrillers'. He told good stories that live on in the hearts of all who encountered them. ( Henry Chukwuemeka Onyeama a Lagos-primarily based writer and teacher)
An Ibo, Really like Chinua Achebe, Ekwensi was born in 1921 in Minna, Niger State, in Northern Nigeria, However attended secondary college in a predominantly Yoruba location, Ibadan. He is very familiar with the various main ethnic groups in his nation, and therefore possesses a information usually nicely exploited in his novels. He went on subsequently to Yaba Larger School in Ibadan and then moved more than to Achimota School in Ghana exactly where he studied forestry. For two years he worked as a forestry officer and then taught science for a short period. He then entered the Lagos College of Pharmacy. He later continued at the University of London (Chelsea College of Pharmacy) in the course of which period he wrote his earliest fiction, his initially book-length publication Ikolo the Wrestler and Other Ibo Tale (1947) , published in London. His writings earned him a put in the National Media exactly where he rose to Head of options in the Nigerian Broadcasting Solutions and eventually being its Director.
Various events in Ekwensi's childhood contributed later to his writings. Though ethnically an Igbo, he was raised amongst Hausa playmates and schoolmates and so spoke each tribal languages. He also discovered of his heritage Via the several Igbo stories and legends that his father told him, which he would later publish in the collection Ikolo the Wrestler and Other Ibo Tales. In 1936 Ekwensi enrolled in the southern Nigerian secondary college identified as Government School, Ibadan, exactly where he discovered Around Yoruba culture as effectively as excelling in English, math, science, and sports. He read anything he may lay his hands on in the college library, concentrating on H. Rider Haggard, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, and Alexandre Dumas. He also wrote articles and stories for a number of college publications, especially The Viking magazine.
For the duration of the later part of his stint as a forest officer Ekwensi began yearning for the city. So starting in 1947 he taught English, biology, and chemistry at Igbobi School close to Lagos. To his classes he read aloud manuscripts of books for young children, Drummer Boy, Passport of Mallam Ilia, and Trouble in From Six, and brief stories. Ultimately, soon after decades of supplementing his writing profession by operating in broadcasting and carrying out other public relations function, Ekwensi gave up his day jobs in 1984 to pursue writing complete time. He returned to writing adult novels, selecting and selecting from his personal "archive" of earlier written manuscripts a great deal of which he revised into the novels Jagua Nana's Daughter, Motherless Child, For a Roll of Parchment, and Divided We Stand, which have been published in the 1980s. For instance, in For a Roll of Parchment he recounted his trip from Nigeria to England, as he had in Folks of the City. He did, nonetheless, update his material to portray post-Globe War II Nigeria, with its more quickly paced life.
Sex, violence, intrigue, and mystery in a recognizable modern day setting most usually in the quickly-paced melting pot of the city had been well-liked diet plan in Ekwensi's operates particularly in Jagua Nana, in which a very worldly and very desirable forty-5 year old Nigerian lady with many suitors falls in Appreciate with a young teacher, Freddie. She agrees to send him to read law in England on the information of their obtaining married on his return. About this gorgeous and impressive prostitute, Ekwensi sets in motion a entire panoply of vibrant, amoral characters who have drifted from their rural origins to grab the dazzling pleasures of the city.
And the novel itself shows us the seedy underbelly of the key city, Lagos, exactly where Jagua's favourite haunt, the Tropicana bar, sets the scene for significantly of the story.
Sometime, back in the 1950s the Onitsha Industry 'literary' mafia, strarted creating and advertising openly, a semi-nude image of a buxom Igbo teenage beauty, with the sassy caption, "Beateam mee lee" - I dare you to beat me!
These had been the prudish days of higher moral values in Igboland and Certainly Nigeria , of Elizabethan style with cane-wielding principal college teachers and headmasters. The offending image sent shockwaves proper down the spines of the public who, having said that, rushed to purchase copies. Men who turned up their noses at the photos in public, secretly purchased, viewed and relished copies. And..college boys did odd jobs for parents, and the Cash they earned had been saved up to the 1 shilling expense of the image, which they made use of to obtain it and then typically tucked it away, in-in between books, away from the prying eyes of parents or the class teacher, from exactly where curious peeks of the treasure may well be sneeked sometimes, at its owner's threat, even in the middle of a lesson. Noted for churning out almanacs, with photos of the popular, unfolding events, folk art, as properly as such literature as these of Ogali A. Ogali, author of the legendary "Veronica My Daughter", the mafia knew exactly where to draw the line. Sex, nevertheless, sold any day and age and the mafia knew this. However no one wanted to be known with every thing even remotely pornographic. "Beateam mee lee" was as a result, at the time, the mother of all daring.
It was against this backdrop that Ekwensi took the Nigerian literary scene by storm with the publication of the raunchy Jagua Nana. Ekwensi's most broadly read novel, Jagua Nana, published in 1961 returned us to the locale of Folks of the City However with a considerably far more cohesive plot centered on Jagua, a courtesan who had a Like for the high-priced as reflected in her name itself, which was a corruption of the high priced English automobile, Jaguar. Her life personalizes the conflict amongst the old standard and modern day urban Africa. Though Ekwensi had earlier shown the path of his functions with the publication, in 1954, of Folks of the City, it was Jagua (the lead character in this novel) that constructed the Ekwensi legend and assumed a life all its own, getting a folk hero of sorts. Jagua dared the reading public. Ekwensi the artist, also had the magic of choosing out names of his characters that have been quick hits. They stuck Love glue in the reader's memory and helped animate the fictional character. Bold, defiant, imaginative and rendered with uncommon technical finesse, Jaguar Nana entirely established Ekwensi as the ultimate chronicler of Nigerian city life.
Published in 1961, the novel Jagua Nana, tells the story of an aging prostitute known as Jagua who tries to give for herself safety in her later life Via her relationship with a younger man. However though this young man is studying law in England, Jagua requires herself in several activities, some dubious, some not. Jagua Nana, witnessed some development in plot high-quality and handle, in contrast to what obtained in Folks Of The City, chronicling the adventures of an ageing prostitute in Lagos, in Like with her perform and the pricey lifestyles, However who ends up in grief and disappointment.
Ekwensi's try to dust her up later and usher her into some form of happiness and fulfillment introduces the quest motif in his function, which manifests itself totally in the sequel, Jagua Nana's Daughter (1987), exactly where Jagua, immediately after a lengthy search, was able to reconnect with her educated, socially elevated daughter, who had also had her own fair share of loose life. Each daughter and mother have been at the very same time engrossed in a quest for mutual fulfillment and healing till they met fortuitously. Ultimately, immediately after she suffers sufficiently, Ekwensi enables her to have happiness.
As was to be in various of his other novels, Ekwensi's moralizing is evident and reform is achievable for some characters. For instance, in the later novel Iska Ekwensi portrayed a young Ibo widow, Filia, who moves to Lagos immediately after her husband's death. There she tries to lead a respectable life. Whilst she tries to get an education and accountable employment, she encounters quite a few obstacles, which permit Ekwensi to show readers a wide variety of urbanites. However this novel, published by a European press, may well not compete for recognition with its predecessor, Jagua Nana, which triggered controversy for its frank portrayal of sexuality. Whilst an Italian film corporation wanted to movie Jagua Nana, the Nigerian government prevented this work fearing undesirable media portrayals of the nation.
Speaking Around what inspired him to write the function in an interview, Ekwensi stated: I was a pharmacy student at the Yaba Greater School these days and I lived in the identical compound with a young man who was very romantic. He would don't miss his evening club for almost everything. We had a evening club then, referred to as Rex Club, run by the late Rewane - the two Rewanes are dead now, by the way and a single of them was at Government School, Ibadan whilst the other one particular was a politician.
Now, a number of years later, I was known as upon to do a programme for the British Broadcasting Organization (BBC) Around evening life and I discovered out that I had so significantly material Around this topic that I may quite make it into a complete book. That was the inspiration.
But A different of his novels is Burning Grass (1961) a collection of vignettes providing insight into the life of a pastoral Fulani cattlemen household of Northern Nigeria..The novel and the characters are primarily based definitely on a real loved ones with whom Ekwensi himself had previously lived. For immediately after studying forestry at the Yaba Larger School in Lagos throughout Planet War II, Ekwensi started a two-year stint as a forestry officer which familiarized him with the forest reserves,from which he was enabled to write such adventure stories in rural settings as Burning Grass..
"In the days in the forest, I was able to reminisce and write. That was whilst I extremely started to write for publishing," he told Nkosi. The quite a few months spent with the nomadic Fulani Persons, later became the subjects of Burning Grass.exactly where he follows the adventures of Mai Sunsaye, who has Sokugo, a wanderlust, and of his household, who attempt to rescue him. When seeing his protagonists By means of varied adventures, Ekwensi portrays the lives of the Fulani cattlemen. This early perform, regarded one particular of his a lot more "critical" novels, was published by Heinemann educational publishers and reissued in 1998
Two novellas for young children followed in 1960; each The Drummer Boy and The Passport of Mallam Ilia which have been workouts in blending conventional themes with undisguised romanticism.
Among 1961 and 1966 Ekwensi published at least one particular key perform each year. The most critical of those had been the novels, Lovely Feathers (1963) and Iska (1966), and two collections of brief stories, Rainmaker (1965) and Lokotown (1966).
Lovely Feathers (1963) reflects the nationalist and pan-Africanist consciousness of the pre-independence days of the 1950s and how the young hero's youthful commitment to his right leads to the disintegration of his family members, as a result underscoring the proverb alluded to in the title: "nevertheless popular a man is outdoors, if he is not respected within his own house he is Really like a bird with stunning feathers, terrific on the outdoors Yet ordinary inside."
From 1967 to 1969, through the Nigerian civil war, while the eastern part of Nigeria attempted to secede, Ekwensi served as a government expertise officer the experiences from which he utilized to write the 1976 picaresque novel Survive the Peace. which realistically portrayed the activities of a radio journalist in the wake of the civil war in Biafra.who in his work to reunite his family members, encounters the violence, destruction, refugees, and relief operations that such chaos engenders. Via flashbacks, Ekwensi also depicts the war itself providing a post-mortem on the just-concluded , interrogates the complications of surviving in the so-referred to as peace. It appears for example at the pathetic fate of James Odugo, the radio journalist who survives the war only to be reduce down on the road by marauding former soldiers.
In such early operates as the collections Ikolo the Wrestler and Other Ibo Tales, and An African Evening's Entertainment, the novel Burning Grass, and the juvenile operates The Leopard's Claw and Juju Rock, Ekwensi told stories in a rural setting.
Ekwensi continued to publish beyond the 1960s, and amongst his later operates are the novel Divided We Stand (1980) in which he lampooned the Nigerian civil war, the novella Motherless Infant (1980), and The Restless City and Christmas Gold (1975), Behind the Convent Wall (1987), and Gone to Mecca (1991).
Ekwensi also published quite a few functions for youngsters.such as Ikolo the Wrestler and Other Ibo Tales (1947) and The Leopard's Claw (1950). In the 1960s, he wrote An African Evening's Entertainment (1962), The Fantastic Elephant-Bird (1965), and Trouble in Form Six (1966). More than time, Ekwensi made other books, largely for kids, which while they could not were internationally acclaimed, had been even so nicely identified and read all more than Nigeria and Africa. They integrated Rainmaker (1965), Iska (1966), Coal Camp Boy (1971) Samankwe in the strange Forest (1973), Motherless Infant (1980), The Restless City and Christmas Gold (1975), Samankwe and the Highway Robbers (1975), Behind the Convent Wall (1987), Gone to Mecca (1991), Masquerade Time! (1992), and King Forever! (1992). In 2006, he completed perform on two other books; "Tortoise and the Brown Monkey", a quick story and "One more Freedom".
Gratifyingly Ekwensi is nevertheless writing, He has published quite a few titles as Although Enjoy Whispers, Divided We Stand, Jagua Nana's Daughter and King for Ever! all associated to earlier performs.
Though Enjoy Whispers Enjoy Jagua Nana revolves About a very eye-catching lady with several suitors. However even though she thinks she has won the Like of her life her father expects her to get married to an older man in an arranged marriage.
Divided We Stand (1980) was written in the heat of the Biafra war itself, whilst published later. It reverses the received wisdom that unity is strength, displaying how ethnicity, Department, and hatred bring Around distrust, displacement, and war itself.
Jagua Nana's Daughter (1986) revolves About Jagua's daughter's traumatic search for her mother top her to discover not only her mother However a companion as properly. She is able to get married to a very placed specialist as she, in contrast to her mother, is a qualified as effectively. She hence gains the safety and protection she demands.
King for Ever! (1992) satirises the want of African leaders to perpetuate themselves in energy. Sinanda's increasing to energy from humble background does not prevent his vaulting ambition from soaring to the height exactly where he was now aspiring to godhead
In the decades because Ekwensi started writing, the Nigerian readership has changed. As opposed to the days of the Onitsha Industry fiction, while books have been printed inexpensively and sold cheaply to suit preferred tastes at the turn of the millennium handful of publishing organizations controlled the selection of books published; book rates produced books generally go beyond the attain of the masses, restricted mainly to schools and libraries, which cater to nonfiction and instructional components. With a number of forms of media rising in reputation, the incentive to read has fallen. With fewer Individuals reading for pleasure, novels are in small demand. For the reason that of those situations, inventive writers suffer. Of this downside, Ekwensi told Larson, "Journalists thrive here, Yet inventive writers get diverted and the creativity gets washed out of them if they ought to take the bread and butter house."
At a public lecture in 2000, quoted by Kole Ade-Odutola in Africa News, the elderly However nevertheless vivacious Ekwensi expressed his want to "develop and nurture young minds in the customs and traditions of their communities" Via his writings. He explained, "African writers of the twentieth century inherited the oral literature of our ancestors, and developing on that, placed at the centre-stage of their fiction, the values by which we as Africans had lived for centuries. It's these values that generate us the Africans that we are--distinguishing amongst excellent and evil, justice and injustice, oppression and freedom." In tune with the Instances, he had began self-publishing his writings on the Online. In spite of the vagaries of the African publishing Globe, at age 80 Ekwensi was nonetheless pursuing his objective since as he wrote in his essay for The Crucial Ekwensi 15 years earlier, "The satisfaction I have gained from writing can do not be quantified."
References
Beier, Ulli ed., Introduction to African Literature (1967);
Breitinger, Eckhard, "Literature for Younger Readers and Education in Multicultural Contexts," in Language and Literature in Multicultural Contexts, edited by Satendra Nandan, Uinveristy of South Pacific, 1983.
· , Volume 117: Caribbean and Black African Writers, Gale, 1992. Dictionary of Literary Biography
Dathorne, O. R. The Black Mind A History of African Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974.
Emenyonu, Ernest, Cyprian Ekwensi. Evans Brothers, 1974.
Emenyonu, Ernest, editor. The Crucial Ekwensi. Heinemann Educational Books, 1987.
Larson, Charles R., The Emergence of African Fiction. Indiana University Press, 1971
Larson, Charles R. The Ordeal of the African Writer. London: Zed Books, 2001.
Lindfors, Bernth, 'Nigerian Satirist' in ALT5
Laurence, . Margaret Extended Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists, 1952-1966 (1968).
Mphahlele, Ezekiel
Palmer Eustace. The Development of the African Novel. Research in African literature. London: Heinemann, 1979.
Arthur Smith was born and was schooled in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He has taught English because 1977 at Prince of Wales College and, Milton Margai School of Education. He is now a Senior Lecturer at Fourah Bay School exactly where he has been lecturing English language and Literature for the past eight years.
Mr Smith's writings were appearing in Nearby newspapers as nicely as in quite a few international media Enjoy West Africa Magazine, Index on Censorship, Concentrate on Library and Understanding Operate. He was one particular of 17 international guests who participated in a seminar on modern American Literature sponsored by the U.S.State Division in 2006. His increasing Mind and reflections on this trip which took him to several US sights and sounds might be read at lisnews.org.
His other publications consist of: Folktales from Freetown, Langston Hughes: Life and Functions Celebrating Black Dignity, and 'The Struggle of the Book' He holds a PhD and a professorship in English from the National Open University, Republic of Benin.
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