Ake: The Years of Childhood

by Wole Soyinda (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $3.88

  The first volume of Wole Soyinka's acclaimed series of autobiographical works. This vivid, exuberant book is the author's account of his childhood in colonial Nigeria. Soyinka's rich and evocative prose tells the tales of his schooldays and adventures, recollecting fears and dangers, and always sensitive to the surprises of childhood. Days full of discoveries, excitement, the presence of spirits and the tribal rituals of his colourful family - including his father - are lovingly recalled.

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.27

  Wole Soyinka 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. In 1984, two years after writing his childhood autobiography, Ake , he opened a tin box that had belonged to his father, a schoolteacher during Nigeria's colonial period. The simple contents of that box provide the fuel for Isara , the second instalment of Soyinka's memoirs. Both books are contained in this single volume. Ake evokes an African childhood, full of wry and poignant episodes which vary from a child's response to a sibling's death, to attempts to make sense of adult contradictions. Isara is a fictionalized memoir of his father, in which personal, social and political history merge. It portrays a generation's search for identity and self-definition in the face of change.