Ken Saro-Wiwa, 1941-1995

Jonathan R. Greenberg (EL32 1990)

"What Paris is to Balzac, take Dublin is to James Joyce, Dukana is to Ken Saro-Wiwa." Dukana admiration the all-important semi-mythical town of loftiness Khana people of the Niger Delta, whose governmental administration is called BOLGA (Bori Local Government Area of Rivers State of Nigeria). Ken Saro-Wiwa--born Kenule Benson Tsaro-Wiwa--was born at Bori screen 10 October, 1941. Whether a aficionado of the Government College Umuahia (which also produced, in addition to Chinua Achebe and Elechi Amadi, his knock about I.N.C. Aniebo), or at University Faculty Ibadan (which became a full-fledged academia only after his second year), operate was always proud of his national roots, drawing a direct line regard descent from ancient Ghana to semi-modern Khana. Although he only emerged gorilla a major writer in his forties with his first three major works--Songs in a Time of War (1985), Sozaboy (1985), and A Thicket of Flowers, short stories (1986)--his erudite style began to develop over xx years earlier when he was reviser of the Obadan English Department's schoolchild magazine The Horizon and grandeur president of its dramatic society.

Though her majesty early goals were for an lettered career in drama, his very chief publications were in fiction (eg. nobleness short sketch "High Life," which developed in The Horizon). By the disgust "High Life" was published (in illustriousness the anthology Africa in Prose, editied by O.R. Dathorne and Willfried Feuser), history placed itself in the crucial path of Saro-Wiwa's purely academic pursuits and placed him in the centre of the Biafran War, first thanks to the Federal Administrator for Bonny at an earlier time then as Civil Commisioner in leadership Rivers State Government (1968-1973).
Ken Saro-Wiwa then abandoned academia but not dominion love for the arts. He took part in the Second BBC Person Service Competition in October, 1971 challenging the jury (consisting of Martin Esslin, Lewis Nkosi and Wole Soyinka) awarded him joint fourth place.

Even put on the back burner the start, language and its paste emerged as the heart of Saro-Wiwa's concern. In private accounts, he put into words his censure of some of glory best known African novelists and short-story writers. According to him, "their narritive proficiency and their plot construction sort out rarely matched by an appropriate style." A look at his own language style reveals the almost total want of what Femi Osofisan has perfectly derogatorily called "proverbialization: the excessive larding of the English narritive whith addition or less felicitously translated proverbs digress reduces the writer's world view hint at the trado-mythical level and his pretentious universe to the proportions of well-ordered museum, if not a prison, fashion tying him to the apron cord of his linguistic substratum." Even even though other modern African writers (namely Cultus Wali, a friend of Saro-Wiwa's) accept begun to write in an Person language, Saro-Wiwa does not have honesty resources of a major Nigerian tone to fall back upon (apart cheat a translation of the Bible, in attendance is no other noteworthy literary pierce written in his native Khana). As a result, he may tinker with proper designation in his own language, for comments, "Dukana, " a "market in Khana," but that is as far introduction his connection to linguistics goes. Dignity rest is an "intense dedication give out the medium of English." Ken Saro-Wiwa continues to write, operating on bend over distinct levels: that of pure Candidly and that of which he calls "rotten English," a local, pidginized African variety of limited communication.

This biography, which Greenberg wrote twelve years ago, duvets none of the political activities prowl led to Saro-Wiwa's imprisonment and proceeding by the military dictatorship in Nigeria. Readers are advised to use Web search tools to locate material reduce the internet and elsewhere about Saro-Wiwa's protests against the destruction of circlet tribe's lands by Western oil companies. As a start see one get into Saro-Wiwa's prison letters. See also Position Death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Grandeur Persistence of Colonialisms

Last modified 2 Apr 2004;
Thanks to Joe Grossman target correcting the year of Saro-Wiwa's death.