Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

A gruesome discovery, and an honest man trying to hold on to his humanity and his life forms the mystery at the heart of a work which is both a gripping whodunit and a sharply satirical novel. Africas first Nobel Laureate in Literature returns to the novel after almost 50 years with an excoriating satire on the nature of power and an unforgettable portrait of contemporary Nigeria

Auteur

Wole Soyinka - playwright, novelist, poet and polemical essayist - was born in Nigeria in 1934. Educated there and at Leeds University, he worked in the British theatre before returning to West Africa in 1960. In 1986 he became the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His plays include The Jero Plays (1960, 1966), The Road (1965), The Lion and the Jewel (1966), Madmen and Specialists (1971), Death and the King's Horseman (1975), A Play with Giants (1984), A Scourge of Hyacinths (1991) and From Zia, With Love (1992). His novels include The Interpreters (1973) and Season of Anomy (1980). His collections of poetry include Idanre (1967), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972) - composed during a period of over two years in prison without trial, most of it in solitary confinement - and Mandela's Earth (1990). In 1988, his collection of essays on literature and culture, Art, Dialogue and Outrage was published. He has also written three autobiographical volumes Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981), Ìsarà: A Voyage Around Essay (1989) and Ibadan (1994). Since 2007 he has been Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

Texte du rabat

A gruesome discovery, and an honest man trying to hold on to his humanity - and his life - forms the mystery at the heart of a work which is both a gripping whodunit and a sharply satirical state of the nation novel.

At once a scathing indictment of an opportunistic and avaricious political elite and a paean to the spirit of people in their charge, Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People On Earth is provocative, profoundly compassionate, and slyly mischievous. Bristling with wit and rage in equal measure and delivered with an enormous generosity of spirit and a dazzling lightness of touch, Wole Soyinka's speaks truth to power as ever with a tour de force from a master storyteller at the height of his powers.