JOIN USA big laugh in a grim world
Wole Soyinka’s Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People On Earth tells a story of contradictions, starting with its title. This is a sordid tale about the human condition by one of the most consummate storytellers alive today.
The novel opens with the sentence: “Papa Davina... preferred to craft his own words of wisdom. Such, for instance, was his famous ‘perspective is all.’” Paps Davina is the religious guru who runs a spiritual ministry that deals in the vilest and most atrocious things, and he is the ally of the wily and evil Sir Goddie, the Prime Minister. ‘Perspective is all’ may even be taken as a reminder of the resounding words of tragic wisdom in King Lear, ‘Ripeness is all’, though Lear’s tragic world and Chronicles’ comic world are poles apart. When a writer like Soyinka laughs, it can have the impact of a tragic blow. He is the first black African writer to win the Nobel prize for literature and has been among the most impactful writers from the continent in the last 50 years. He is a novelist, playwright, essayist, political activist, and critic of society. He has only written two previous novels, The Interpreters (1965) and Season of Anomy (1973), and Chronicles... appears after a gap of 48 years.
Chaotic world
The novel has many storylines that get mixed up and work around the mysterious murder of a widely respected and popular engineer Duyole Pitan-Payne. Prime Minister Goddie, the false prophet Papa Davina and many others are all involved in the plot in different and complicated ways. There are other characters too that dominate the novel’s chaotic world, like Pitan-Payne’s best friend Dr Kighare Menka who is an award-winning surgeon, famous for his work with mutilated victims of the Boko Haram militant group. Through him, the novel opens up a black market of human parts in which the country’s elders have a stake. Science, religion, business, and superstition mix in weird ways in this underworld venture where human organs are used as charms to gain power, kill enemies, and for other purposes. Some of the great works of literature, like The Brothers Karamazov, are built around murders and can be read as detective stories and great explorations of life and searches for meanings and insights. They are read, experienced, and understood at different levels. Chronicles... also offers different levels of reading, and a contradiction holds these levels together. A big laughter runs through its grim world, making its inhabitants the happiest people on earth. There is a pungent irony here, but it is a perspective that makes us understand the world better. Laughter can probe the meaning of misery as much as tears can.
This is a complex work that needs some care and effort to follow. There are a large number of characters and all of them are not perhaps essential for the story. The language is a bit dense, not the simple language Soyinka has been known for. Some readers might even be tempted to drop off or quit because of the complexities of the story, though the one who persists with it will certainly be rewarded. An understanding of Nigeria’s politics might help the reader appreciate the novel better. But it should have been the other way round!
A cultural icon
Soyinka is more a playwright, poet, and essayist than a novelist. The Nobel Academy described him as one “who fashions the drama of existence in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones.” He has also been a political activist and has protested against personality cults and dictatorship. He has championed human rights and has been a consistent critic of his country’s political culture. He has been imprisoned and has faced the threat of death sentence. He wrote on toilet paper in prison. He has influenced public thinking and perceptions in many ways as a writer, activist, rebel, public speaker, theatre person, professor in some of the world’s best universities, a thinker with an international imprint and audience, and even as an atheist son of a cleric. Soyinka is one of Africa’s, in fact, the world’s, important cultural icons, important not just for his writing but also for his views, positions, and life. His sensibility is at once modern and rooted in his traditions. Chronicles... has all the elements of this sensibility.
But I played a mental game after reading the book. What would I have thought of it if I didn’t know the author was Wole Soyinka? I have not read him for decades and might not have immediately recognised that the writer of this novel was the one whom I admired in the 1980s. I wondered if I would still have the same views about the book. I certainly think he is a better playwright than a novelist. It is a lesser Woyinka who wrote this, but much the same writer. We get a glimpse of a fine vision, but the younger Woyinka might have delivered it better.