The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis

• His latest literary offering, characteristically provocative and captivating, is a veritable time bomb which is bound to explode indolent, self-serving assumptions as regards the parameters of the national question, the character of the State and the foundations of nationhood in contemporary Nigeria.

• Written in exile in 1996, at the height of Abacha’s repression and three years after the annulment of the June 12 election, this is not a measured book. It is a furious, grief-stricken argument, against the annulment, against the international community’s silence, against the African leaders who normalised Abacha’s regime, and against a Nigerian state that had demonstrated, repeatedly, its capacity to destroy its best possibilities.

• Unless you are studying Nigerian history or intrigued by ideas of nationhood this book probably isn’t for you. I found it highly relevant in our currently fractured society and valuable in how we view ourselves and our future as a nation.

• Soyinka's powerful prose brilliantly sketches the dilemmas plaguing Africa's demographic giant and reveals the stark choices facing Nigeria, a nation brought to the edge of ruin by the misappropriation of its oil wealth.

• His work is sublime in ways I cannot even think to describe. The prose is dense and includes vocabulary far beyond my own (I have learned to keep a dictionary handy when reading Soyinka); it is well worth the readers effort as his work is truly evocative.

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