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A Nation Seen Through an Individual
In A Peculiar Tragedy, Adewale Maja-Pearce, uses his
biography of JP Clark-Bekederemo as a lens to look at the
larger picture of the post-colonial history of Nigeria. How did a
writer, so rich in precocious talent, fail to attain the rich
promise he hinted at in his early works? How could a country,
so rich and promising at independence
from Britain in 1960, disappoint expectations to become one
of the major development failures of Africa? Is there
any connection between the two?
Maja-Pearce seems to think so and goes to great length, all of
400 plus pages in this book, to try and make his
case. Clark was among the Nigerian literary elite (including
Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Christopher Okigbo)
who were educated at the University College, Ibadan in the
1950s. Achebe went on to write Things Fall Apart,
Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Okigbo died
fighting for Biafra - a cause he believed. Clark ended up
becoming the least known of them all ( the least successful)
despite showing more early talent as a poet and
dramatist than Soyinka, according to this book.
Much of the reasons for Clark’s failure to live up to his early
promise are sought in the Nigerian civil war of
1967-70 and the choices the various writers made about it.
While Achebe was on the side of Biafra, campaigning its
cause in capitals around the world and Soyinka was in jail for
his activism aimed at ending the war, Clark was
working for the Nigerian federal government. Of course,
Okigbo was an early casualty.
Maja-Pearce believes that Clark’s literary instincts should
have thrown him on the same side with his friends and
fellow writers but chose an embrace with the government that
was drain his literary talent while leaving him rich.
Much of this book is the product of research conducted in
Nigeria and the U.K., interviews from time spent with
Clark over two years in Lagos and his country home of
Kiagbodo, the setting for most of his early writings, and
access to the writer’s personal papers. It throws new light on
the famous quarrel between Achebe, Soyinka and
Clark, and brings forth new responses from some of the
actors themselves.
It is a must read for anyone interested in knowing the workings
on the literary and artistic circle that formed in
Ibadan in the 1950s and 60s, and how it led to the emergence
of modern Nigerian literature.
Read excerpts....
Available on amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Peculiar-Tragedy-Clark-Bekederemo-
Beginning-Literature/dp/1453813217
