Monday, November 5, 2007

Cyprian Ekwensi (1921-2007)

I am deeply saddened by this news of the death of the pioneer Nigerian novelist Cyprian Ekwensi this week. He was 86. Ekwensi, the author of arguably the earliest major novel in Nigeria (People of the City, 1954) and other vastly popular novels--Passport of Mallam Illya, African Night's Entertainment, Lokotown, Jagua Nana, The Drummer Boy, etc--that, as secondary students in Nigeria in the 1980s, captured, intrigued, and liberated our fertile imaginations and youthful fantasies. His simple, uncomplicated plots, while a subject of longstanding critique by literary scholars, was the very reason we read, and re-read his incomparably entertaining works. He was the people's novelist!
Ekwensi was scheduled to participate in the key event of the Lagos Book Arts Festival (which begins this week), by reading from his novel on the Biafran War, Divided We Stand published in 1980. The CORA-organized Festival and its colloquium, Constructing the Nation: Stories Out of Biafra, will now serve as a memorial to a man who used his unpretentious yet prodigious fictive imagination to instill in me and a zillion others the love for the novel and for literature. Rest, Old Man; travel safely.

3 comments:

Obiwu said...

I am saddened by the passing of Ekwensi, and yet elated by the great life he lead. Ekwensi was one of the few joys of life - another being the Oriental Brothers' Highlife Band! - that liberated us, the "Biafran Babies" generation, from the after-numbness of the Biafran War.

I wrote the lead article - "Forty Years of Nigerian Civil War Literature" - for the Lagos Book Fair and Arts Festival where Ekwensi was to have read from his novel Divided We Stand. I now dedicate that piece to his memory.

Cyprian Ekwensi served us well in the Biafran War. He also lifted us above the war through sublimation. He lived very well and we are very grateful to God for his presence in our midst. Speed well, Old Man.

Obiwu

Anonymous said...

I remember "the burning grass'which i read in 1973. my 1st literature book...1st year in secondary school..
May His soul rest in peace

Unknown said...

I grieved for him too. And loved his work madly...