CHRONICLES FROM THE LAND OF THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE ON EARTH

A richly satirical novel, his first since 1973, by the Nigerian Nobel Prize winner.

“The timing could not have been more thoughtfully ordained. Indeed—and he leant over to whisper confidentially to the surgeon during one of their meals together….‘It was I who set fire to Hilltop Mansion, just to get you down in Badagry.’ ” There’s a lot going on in Soyinka’s shaggy dog yarn, its plot dense enough to rival anything by Günter Grass. The speaker here is an engineer who has fallen afoul of the nation’s prime minister, a propagandist wedded to the ironic slogan of Soyinka’s title. His lifelong friend, a surgeon who specializes in amputations, now has rivals in child soldiers and Boko Haram terrorists, given to lopping off the limbs of presumed infidels out in the countryside. They’re not the only bad actors: As Soyinka writes, the police and the Nigerian army are not shy themselves about relieving their victims of body parts, and then there are the usual grisly accidents and freelance acts of violence. Dr. Kighare Menka sighs, “I am only a surgeon. My specialization is to cut people up, after others have recommended that course of action.” His engineer friend, Duyole Pitan-Payne, has much bigger ambitions for the good doctor, but alas, things go awry, as they always do. Soyinka’s sprawling tale abounds in sly references to current events in Nigeria, and his targets are many, not least of them politicians and self-styled holy men with bigger ambitions still (says one of the latter, “The trouble with you…is diffidence, that illegitimate child of memory. Go for chutzpah!”). Everyone you’ll encounter in these pages, including someone who just might be the devil himself, has ardent hopes and big dreams and no fear of stepping on others, such as one aide who wonders “why widows, widowers, and orphans did not simply lick their wounds and adopt appeasing attitudes towards their violators for the privilege of staying alive.”

Dazzling wordplay and subtle allusion mark this most welcome return to fiction.