Friday, April 28, 2006

Wole Soyinka reading...

Having read nothing of Nigerian literary notable and Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka, I decided to attend his recent reading organised by the Harvard Book Store yesterday.

Soyinka conforms to a literary type in his looks -- a frizzy-haired head (no parallels to Rodney King, please), and a French beard. And the hair a respectable white. Scholarly, deep-voiced.

He read from his latest memoir -- a quite proper, quite English-accent -- a passage that deals with the situation in Darfur. What intrigued me was his observations on the Arabic-African shades to this problem in Sudan, a country that is a member of the Arab League and the Organization of African states...how Sudan favors and glorifies its Arab heritage while playing down the African heritage...
Soyinka was forceful and clear...a really fine speaker...

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