Books like Wole Soyinka by Eldred D. Jones

A powerful political drama set in 1946 Oyo that explores cultural conflict, tragic choices, and the inner workings of individual and group psychology.

The Burden of Memory considers all of Africa - indeed, all the world - as it poses the logical question: Once repression stops, is reconciliation between oppressor and victim possible? In the face of centuries-long devastations wrought on the African continent and her Diaspora by slavery, colonialism, Apartheid, and the manifold faces of racism, what form of recompense could possibly be adequate? In a voice as eloquent and humane as it is forceful, Soyinka examines this fundamental question as he illuminates the principle duty and "near intolerable burden" of memory to bear the record of injustice. In so doing he challenges notions of simple forgiveness, of confession and absolution, as strategies for social healing. Ultimately, he turns to artpoetry, music, painting - as one source that may nourish the seed of reconciliation, art as the generous vessel that can hold together the burden of memory and the hope of forgiveness. Based on Soyinka's Stewart-McMillan lectures delivered at the Du Bois Institute at Harvard. The Burden of Memory speaks not only to those concerned specifically with African politics, but also to anyone seeking the path to social justice through some of history's most inhospitable terrain.

"David Attwell defends the literary and political integrity of the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, arguing that he has absorbed the textual turn of postmodern culture while still addressing his nation's ethical crisis. As a form of "situational metafiction," Coetzee's novels are shown to reconstruct and critique some of the key discourses in the history of colonialism and apartheid from the eighteenth century to the present. While self-conscious about fiction-making, Coetzee's work takes seriously the condition of the society in which it is produced." "Attwell begins by describing the intellectual and political contexts of Coetzee's fiction. He proceeds with a developmental analysis of the corpus of six novels, drawing on Coetzee's other writings in stylistics, literary criticism, translation, political journalism, and popular culture. Attwell's elegantly written analysis deals both with Coetzee's subversion of the dominant culture around him and with his ability to grasp the complexities of giving voice to the anguish of South Africa."--BOOK JACKET.