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

Craig McLuckie (Okanagan College)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.2.3: Anglophone African Writing and Culture: Subsaharan.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Domains

Political Science

Dates

First circulation or publication 1996

Places

Nigeria (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Autobiography (any)
Essays/ Lectures (any)
Non-Fiction
- Memoir
Non-fictional prose

Resources

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

combines an excoriating assessment of Nigeria’s ruling clique (paying particular attention to the military ‘governments’ of Generals Murtala Mohammed, Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha), painful eye-witness reports of human rights violations, and a poetic appeal for Nigeria’s future: June 12, 1993, the date on which Moshood K. O. Abiola was elected civilian President, to supersede General Babangida, is when “The hands of the nation clock were stopped on a day that, ironically, recorded its birth. If the nation is to live, its resuscitation must commence where its heart first stopped beating” (143).

The book was written whilst Soyinka, in exile from Babangida and Abacha’s regimes, was working

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1880 words

Citation: McLuckie, Craig. "The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 August 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12857, accessed 25 November 2024.]