8 /10 1 Votes
Originally published 1973 | 4/5 Goodreads | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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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. Though highly studied as part of Soyinka's importance to the African literary canon, criticism of the novel has been mixed, with some critics describing the novel as a "failure".
Themes
The novel explores "the role of individual will as the agent of social transformation", looking at the actions taken by each of the four main characters in changing the corrupt Nigerian society. Marxist critic Aisha Karim, describes this as a theme similar to his other novel The Interpreters. Other critics explore other Post-Colonial social and ethnographic dynamics explored by the novel. For example, critic Joseph E Obi, describes the novel as a "definitive reading of the militarized state in Africa."
Critic Obi Maduakor calls the novel an "intensly religious book", preoccupied with "moral issues". For Maduakor, the novel revolves around a quest of the social reforming main character Ofeyi in finding moral and ethical solutions to inequalities, and often these ideal solutions are found in natural or agricultural settings .