Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the 欧宝娱乐 database.
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor. Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993鈥�98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of If岷固€. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008. In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
Throughout听The Interpreters, Soyinka presents a trenchant critique of Nigerian society and a sophisticated contemplation of the individual's struggle to find a tenable position. The author's satire is often directed at the superficiality of society, the unexamined contradictions inherent in the lives and conduct of many, and the pervasiveness of corruption. He grapples with the tension between traditional and modern values and practices, but it's clear that neither offers a complete solution for life's difficulties. Instead of advocating for one over the other, Soyinka insists on critically examining both, recognizing the complexity of the world and the need for a deeper understanding, thereby challenging the audience's intellect.
Wole Soyinka- one of the greatest writers Africa, and the world has ever seen. First African Nobel laureate. Celebrated poet. But also a sublime novelist, as this work proves. Actually the great man wrote this his debut novel many decades ago when he was still a young man. Here we concentrate on a coterie of articulate young men in particular as a nation - Nigeria- starts to stand on its own feet. Take a bow Sagoe, Egbo, Sekoni etc. Being Soyinka this is a brilliant, dense work with poetic undulations. From the start one might even give up when we read, "Metal on concrete jars my drink lobes". And what about the voluble Voidancy, "philosophy of shit" - the "business for latrine"? Farcical but gripping in its own way "farting like a beast " et al. A world class work indeed, this novel, with the author ventilating his wariness, his disdain for stultifying factors already pulling the African continent down from inception . Hark at the "moral turpitide", the hypocrisy, the smug sanctimonious elements already taking root. Apart from our intellectual young men here, broad strata of society is delineated here: eg the aristocracy, the hoi polloi, academics, demi-mondes, even albino.
The women in this novel are intriguing too, though the setting is many decades ago. Dehinwa, but Simi in particular. Simi comes across as an assertive, enigmatic, very seductive woman - in control even in respect of sex. Even the sexual details are brilliantly couched in poetic language here; yet Simi is in control. Life goes on here with ineluctable tragedies eg road accidents which the author has again been world famous for, for decades. Ravages on the road. Personally, unconsciously I find myself conflating this work with that of the talented SA writer, Deon Simphiwe Skade (author of A series of Undesirable events). In Deon 's work we are confronted too with young cerebral protagonists, with the author employing marmoreal poetic language echoing DH Lawrence. The Interpreters indeed...
Kind of difficult for me to get into at first, set in Nigeria, following a group of Nigerian young professionals as they try to figure out how to be the Western educated people in a post-colonial Nigeria that is split and schizophrenic culturally from the divides between its history, its indiginous culture, its western and white influences, its political upheaval and corruption, and so on... The names of people, places, indiginous mythology, and certain historical events not in the maintstream consciousness of America make this somewhat difficult to follow at first, and it is definitely something to be re-read, rather than read. It took me two attempts to get past the first forty pages before I found myself picking it up a third time (nearly a year after the post-colonial literature class I took where I was supposed to have read this book in its entirety) and finally taking the initiative and effort to keep track of unfamiliar names, to refer to notes I took in the class on relevant culture and history of Nigeria, and proceeded to read it fully over two or three days, and loved it immensely. More than immensely.
P.S. I just re-read the Interpreters, and have to say I was even more blown way by the immensity, subtlety, and gravity of this book. I know all things literature are subjective, but Soyinka's writing is so phenomenal, I highly recommend to anyone who takes the time to read this review, make it a project to read this novel with some research in order to understand the context of what is unfamiliar, and immerse yourself.
Das setenta p谩ginas que li (e me enfadaram de morte desde o primeiro par谩grafo) creio ter percebido que as personagens s茫o um grupo de amigos que se encontram nas salas da universidade e nos clubes nocturnos, mas n茫o sei quantos s茫o, nem quais os homens e as mulheres. Quanto ao assunto, se h谩, n茫o apanhei nem um bocadinho...
_____________ Pr茅mio Nobel da Literatura 1986 Wole Soyinka nasceu na 狈颈驳茅谤颈补 em 13 de Julho de 1934.
Sadly, I didn't enjoy this book as I had hoped I would. Maybe it's because of the tumultuous period I'm in right now or maybe it really is Soyinka's obfuscating style that irritated me鈥擨 can forgive him for it in his plays but in a novel, it's just unnecessary鈥攖hat I have given up on it one-third of the way through. I hope to pick it up again one day when I can focus better. Although I have to say though that the number of characters, the lack of dialog tags where relevant, and the shifting timeline are uninspiring to re-read... I don't mind difficult reads, but I'm not sure what the reward of this one would be yet.
Wole Soyinka is a very fascinating writer who has seen it all, done it all in literature over the decades. His books, the language is quite difficult but very rewarding. We don't have to understand every single passage or paragraph he writes, anyway. One thing I appreciate about his works is the way he respects women a lot in his own way, dating back to even the books he wrote over 50 years ago! You do not get the impression that he undermines or patronises women, but quite the opposite. Look at the character of Simi here in this book for example, one might not understand her fully, but one sees how strong and awesome she is. Mysterious, very confident, sexy and dominant but not in a pushy way. Apparently she drains willing men (man), with an allure that is still African yet "western" . Very intriguing woman.
First novel by the First African Nobel=Lit and my First AWS in a year chock=full of AWS. And wouldn't you know?, there's a pretty clear whiff of something Pynchonian here too, something maybe of V, something about that whole sick crew; here, the interpreters. And too the whiff of the Voidante Philosophy ("To shit is human, to voidate divine") alone is enough to suspect the affinity (nope, no spoilers).
Che romanzo faticoso. Con la peggiore traduzione in cui mi sia mai imbattuta. La storia narra di un gruppo di giovani nigeriani che rientrano in patria dopo aver studiato e lavorato all'estero. Siamo in piena decolonizzazione, ma i ragazzi, seri e pieni di speranza per una patria nuova, si scontreranno contro antichi pregiudizi, corruzione, cavilli, disonest脿. Il romanzo alterna uno stile semplice e diretto a pagine postmoderne e oniriche in cui 猫 difficile districarsi.
I鈥檓 sure it鈥檚 possible to read The Interpreters as a representative narrative of postcolonial Nigeria鈥檚 sociopolitical climate and the Biafran War. With a little effort we could fit each protagonist into some archetypical mentality inherited from colonial elitism. Like I notice other reviewers doing, we could thereby explore the novel as a matrix of myth creation that conglomerates traditional heritages with neocolonial mismanagement.
However, I don鈥檛 think an application of any such structuralism provides a useful apparatus for coming to terms with The Interpreters. This novel is so baffling, no guiding framework will be able to conjure meaning beyond that initial question of 鈥榟ow can I proceed forwards despite my initial state of fascination/confusion/displeasure鈥�? There鈥檚 no plot, the characters鈥� personalities are inconsistent, and the structure is totally bizarre. You never really know where or when you are. Symbolised by Voidancy- the novel鈥檚 emergent 鈥榩hilosophy of shit鈥�- Soyinka realises all interpretations are disposable. The Interpreters happily continues irrespective of your narrative. Verbose, obfuscating, schizophrenic鈥� and mesmerising.
So I tried to embrace the novel鈥檚 absurdity. If 鈥榚ducating鈥� the reader at all, Soyinka prioritises fiction鈥檚 propensity for defamiliarisation and deautomatonisation. Like Achebe, Soyinka lets 鈥橳hings Fall Apart鈥�. Shouldn鈥檛 we allow ourselves to enjoy something that arrives at no coherent interpretation? Can it be productive for the critic to move away from the interpretative fallacy? I think yes, so I鈥檓 giving this 4 stars even though it鈥檚 equally deserving of 1 or 2 or 3 or 5 or less or more. Soyinka allows us to create new knowledges of literary study, asking why something has to be interpretable for it to be 鈥榞ood鈥�, or good to be 鈥榠nterpretable鈥�. I鈥檝e been encouraged to think these questions before and it鈥檚 beautiful because Wole lets you think them all over again for the first time.
"What are you getting out of it?" "Knowledge of a new generation of interpreters."
So says one character to another in this dense, complex and challenging little novel by Wole Soyinka. Published in 1965, Nigeria was a newly independent nation and this book follows a group of young people as they grapple with questions of how to live their lives. This book is not an act of nation building, as many post independence novels tend to be, but sees characters dealing with situations in which they knowingly or unknowingly deal with life's universal questions: family, marriage, work, politics, religion and death. Death and resurrection hang persistently over the novel and bring a sense of uneasiness about the ancestral past and how to move on with that into the future. A crucial aspect of the novel is the power of people art to reorder and affect reality, as we see the artist Kola arranging his friends and other characters on the canvas into a pantheon of both indigenous deities and Christian imagery. Whether this arrangement represents or affects truly what this group of people see as their changing positions in a changing Nigeria we can't tell, because this is a novel more for those wanting to ask questions rather than receive answers.
This is a glorious mess of a debut novel. Soyinka tries to encapsulate and satirize middle-class postcolonial Nigerian life to great effect, and he usually succeeds. He writes a nonlinear "narrative" about a group of friends who are all quite different and throws out any standard novelistic form with gusto. Grand images are set up that seem to not go anywhere. Key characters die off the page without any build up. Subplots are obfuscated by Soyinka's hyperliterate prose style. The novel doesn't actually seem to end up anywhere in particular. Narrative satisfaction is subdued. And yet I didn't really want to stop reading. The language is brutally dense, but working through it feels rewarding in the moment and upon reflection. The characters have so much going on, whether they make up ridiculous voidante philosophies or randomly fail as an engineer and sculpt a masterpiece or suddenly prove themselves to be extremely homophobic, but they do, in the end feel like real people, like real people struggling to come to terms with how they should identify Nigeria as a postcolonial state. What is authentic? Integration into a "modernized" society or the maintenance of tribal traditions? Super thought-provoking stuff.
If this were published by a white American, this would be widely read academically in a way that this basically forgotten gem has not been afforded whatsoever. I'm so glad this just got reprinted.
*Lazarus the albino in the field of cotton (creation of one's own myth) *Goldman the gay white man who uses Baldwin/Another Country to pick people up *the streetlights flicking on, fighting the electric power that's stronger than them *Sekoni building the power plant that is rejected by authority; he later goes crazy *Sir Derinola emerging from the hideous wardrobe in a bra and top hat (appears before Sagoe the journalist, who is nursing his hangover)
Sebuah karya yang agak berat untuk dihadam, kekangan utama dari sudut kefahaman naratif dan juga masa. Namun, ia kaya dengan semangat 'orang muda' yang baru membina kerjaya dalam sistem pentadbiran negara mereka yang 'sakit'. Saya menggemari dialog dan peristiwa Dehinwa berhujah dengan ibu dan ibu saudaranya dan peristiwa ketika upacara di gereja.
A group of young Nigerian intellectuals struggle to articulate meaning amid the general squalor of modernity in post-independence Africa. Very good. Soyinka was better known as a playwrite, but this is small masterpiece. The characters are rich, humorous and tragic, the style is difficult but evocative, the setting will be foreign to most readers (or most readers reading this blog); in short, everything you'd want in a novel. Worth your time.
Wonderful book with a wild prose style, funny satire and jokes and great characterisation.
e.g.
"'Metal on concrete jars my drink lobes'. This was Sagoe, grumbling as his stuck fingers in his ears against the mad screech of iron tables. Then his neck was nearly snapped as Dehinwa leapt up and Sagoe's arm dangled in the void where her lap had been. Bandele's arms never ceased to surprise. At half-span they embraced tables and chairs, pushed them deep into the main wall as dancers dodged long chameleon tongues of the cloudburst and the wind leapt at them, visibly male-violent. In a moment only the band was left. The 'plop' continued some time before its meaning came clear to Egbo and he looked up at the leaking roof in disgust, then threw his beer into the rain muttering. 'I don't need his pity. Someone tell God not to weep in my beer.'"
"He recalled that it had been the rainy season when he returned from Europe and America. Instead of heat he obtained electric shocks - once as he touched the faucet of a bath with his toes and another time through a finger as he dialled a number on the phone. When he told Mathias he said, 'Na austerity measure. Government wan join three ministry together -Works, Electricity and Communication' and roared away at the idea."
"The rains of May become in July slit arteries of the sacrificial bull, a million bleeding punctures of the sky-bull hidden in convulsive cloud humps, black, overfed for this one event, nourished on horizon ops of endless choice grazing, distant beyond giraffe reach. Some competition there is below, as bridges yield right of way to lorries packed to the running-board, and the wet tar spins mirages of unspeed-limits to heroic cars and their cargoes find a haven below the precipice. The blood of earth-dwellers mingles with blanched streams of the mocking bull, and flows into currents eternally below earth. The Dome cracked above Sekoni's short-sighted head one messy night. Too late he saw the insanity of a lorry parked right in his path, a swerve turned into a skid and cruel arabesques of tyres. A futile heap of metal, and Sekoni's body lay surprised across the open door, showers of laminated glass around him, his beard one fastness of blood and wet earth."
A small group of young Nigerian intellectuals have a few drinks and hold pretentious philosophical conversations, in between ribbing each other about girls, jobs, getting drunk, etc. I shouldn't like this book at all, I should be thinking that no decent writer would write conversations like that, because people don't talk that way. These characters in this situation would, and the conversations between them are perfect. So are the almost throw-away sentences at the ends of chapters which made me completely rethink what I had just read. Wole Soyinka is not a decent writer, he is a great writer. The characters, places, corrupt society and satirical set pieces are all very well depicted. The writing is richly sensual, poetic, funny and distinctive. The author is better known as a playwright and poet than a novelist, so the plays and poems must be mind-blowing. He even makes Voidancy poetic in this little gem of a novel. The story of how they ended up in the situation they are in for the time-frame of the novel is told obliquely, using their memories and each others, flashbacks, hallucinations and a little from the third party narrator. This means that the story is revealed through a series of images. The mixture of techniques works very well. Many of the stories are not happy ones, as the protagonist group deal with corruption, frustration, bigotry and ignorance. They are all interesting.
This was Soyinka's first novel -- he has written at least one other since; although he is better known for his plays and poetry, this is not a bad novel. The "interpreters" of the title are a group of friends who observe and satirize the corruption which was already endemic in Nigeria shortly after independence; the theme is similar to Achebe's No Longer at Ease, although the style is very different and less realistic. Like many literary novels of the sixties, the chronology is deliberately obscured by flashbacks and flashforwards to give a feeling of stasis; what's more important is the poetic, image-filled prose. As with Soyinka's plays and poetry, there is a substratum of Yoruba mythology -- partly explicit, in that one character is painting many of the others into a work called "Pantheon" as various Yoruba gods; I think that probably all the major characters, and many of the events, have analogues in the mythology, although I'm not familiar enough with this religion to identify them all. The novel has a good deal of humor, although some of it is overdone. There are many levels here and I probably didn't get all of them.
Luin Tulkit-kirjaa melkein 3 viikkoa. T盲llaiset kirjat saavat pohtimaan vakavasti, kannattaako vapaa-aikaa k盲ytt盲盲 lukemiseen vai ihan johonkin muuhun.
Voihan otsalohkoni - kyll盲 oli vaikea kirja. Muun muassa t盲llaisen kielen takia lukemisesta puuttui kaikki ilo. Sin盲ns盲 nuorten nigerialaisten hetket olivat kiinnostavia v盲l盲yksi盲 afrikkalaiseen 1960-lukuun ja ilmiselv盲盲n juurettomuuteen. Monet palasivat expat-el盲m盲st盲 ja opiskelemasta ulkomailta. Ja tapailivat Afrikassa uskonmiehi盲, Afrikan valkoisia, yliopistoeliitti盲 ja emansipoituneita naisia.
En ymm盲rt盲nyt kirjaa lainkaan. Siin盲 oli selv盲sti tarina, mutta kuka miss盲 mit盲 miksi kenen kanssa? Mik盲 oli kirjan idea? Miksi se oli kirjoitettu?
En saa t盲st盲 kirjasta selkoa ilman Googlea tai GR-arvioita. Tuskin kuitenkaan v盲lit盲n niin paljoa, ett盲 k盲ytt盲isin aikaa kumpaankaan.
Ymm盲rr盲n my枚s, ett盲 ongelmani saattaa olla se, etten lainkaan ymm盲rr盲 kontekstia. Mutta k盲盲nn枚skirjallisuuden pit盲isi auttaa lukijaa t盲ll盲 matkalla eik盲 tehd盲 siit盲 viel盲 vaikeampaa.
I received the copy of Wole Soyinka鈥檚 The Interpreters 2 weeks ago. Little by little, I devour its page until the nagging and persistent boredom attacks me. Bit by bit, I try to understand its meaning. Whether I鈥檓 sitting aboard the usual morning jeepney ride, or standing in the LRT, I read it as I used to read C.S. Lewis鈥� The Chronicles of Narnia. The difference is, I鈥檓 quite dead bored. I CANT interpret The Interpreters.
That I am lost somewhere in pages 40-50 after a two-week period of possessing the book is a proof that I am losing the grip of reading it.
I am either too dumb or have forgotten too much of high school English to even begin understanding this book. I was especially excited to read it after finishing another book by a Nigerian. After reading the first 30 pages, I was completely lost. After 60, I thought it was all starting to make sense, but i'm not sure anymore. What is this book about? Something to do with being on a river and maybe some parties in leaky huts? I really just don't have a clue. Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for literature and I kind of feel like either his plays must be much more coherent or the emperor is naked.
Soyinka is my favorite African writer to date (admitting that I have only read a handful and often in translation). He is authentically funny and, most important, sensual. I taste the food, feel the rhythm and heat etc. An interesting contrast to fellow Nigerian, Ibu writer Chinua Achebe who thinks too much and tries too hard.
Ich habe das Buch f眉r meine damalige "L盲nder"-Challenge gelesen, wo es als Vertreter f眉r Nigeria fungierte. Ansonsten kann ich mich nicht mehr an sehr viel erinnern, nur dass ich es glaub ich ziemlich langweilig fand und es wohl nie zur Hand genommen h盲tte, wenn ich es nicht f眉r diese Challenge gebraucht h盲tte.
The Interpreters is one of the most complicated novels because of its fragmented structure. The very title indicates that the interpretation of the novel is never an easy task. However, the chaos in the structure reflects the chaos in Africa after the independence.