Season of Anomy by Wole Soyinka. New York. 1974. Third Press. 320 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Bennie Arrington.
DESCRIPTION - Season of Anomy is the second novel of Nobel winning Nigerian playwright and critic Wole Soyinka. Published in 1973, the novel is one of only two novels published during Soyinka's highly productive literary career. An African nation's continuing struggle for interwoven with a poignant love story, becomes the setting for this compelling novel. SEASON OF ANOMY adroitly and powerfully portrays the clash between old values and new ways, Western methods and African traditions. Ofeyi is a young, Western educated African. Through the gentle, yet forceful tutelage of a village elder, he develops a growing awareness of the forces of evil besetting his beloved country and the need to preserve a natural and simple way of life. Armed with his idealism and devotion to his mistress, national beauty idol, Irisyse, Ofeyi embarks on a path which gives birth to a desperate and bloody struggle for freedom from the shackles of the ‘Cartel' - the sinister and corrupt embodiment of all that is oppressive, exploitive colonialism. Aiyeri, Ofeyi's adopted village, becomes the inspiration for and the source of this movement to retain his nation's purity and soul.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.
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