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A Play of Giants
69 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Wole Soyinka
208 books1,260 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying 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 campaign for independence from British colonial rule. 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, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, 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 on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying 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 campaign for independence from British colonial rule. 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, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, 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 on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 26, 2017
A satire or tyrants in particular and power politics in general. Comedy if you just do a surface reading and don't think about it much. Tragedy, if you chose to take it seriously.
January 22, 2016
I thought this book was so cute, which I admit is a strange reaction to a play based on Africa’s evil presidents for life. :/
All Kamini wants is a statue of him and his powerful friends positioned in the UN Embassy. As Life President Dr. El-Hajj Kamini, DSO, VC, PhD, LLD many times over, it only makes sense. In addition, a few hundred million dollars from the World Bank would make him very happy. His friends, Life Presidents of their respective countries themselves, support and encourage him. To them, whatever a man with absolute power does makes perfect sense, no matter how gruesome the deed. It is this belief that causes Kamini to do the unimaginable, which in the end leads to serious repercussions.
Like I said before, I thought this book was cute. I couldn’t help but like Kamini, who acted like a petulant child. His friends were pretentious, and cheerfully showed off the horrible ways they kept their citizens in line. To the rest of the world (America and Russia were represented in this play), they all looked like very powerful fools. However, even those countries could barely keep the Life Presidents in line.
This play just goes to show that a mixture pride, ignorance, and heavy doses of power, can make any person extremely dangerous. In fact, those were the qualities of a number of real-life African leaders who inspired Wole Soyinka to write this play.
I highly recommend this satire. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was its abrupt ending. Everything else I thoroughly enjoyed – I smiled several times. This was the first of Wole Soyinka’s works that I’ve read. I look forward to reading more. :)
All Kamini wants is a statue of him and his powerful friends positioned in the UN Embassy. As Life President Dr. El-Hajj Kamini, DSO, VC, PhD, LLD many times over, it only makes sense. In addition, a few hundred million dollars from the World Bank would make him very happy. His friends, Life Presidents of their respective countries themselves, support and encourage him. To them, whatever a man with absolute power does makes perfect sense, no matter how gruesome the deed. It is this belief that causes Kamini to do the unimaginable, which in the end leads to serious repercussions.
Like I said before, I thought this book was cute. I couldn’t help but like Kamini, who acted like a petulant child. His friends were pretentious, and cheerfully showed off the horrible ways they kept their citizens in line. To the rest of the world (America and Russia were represented in this play), they all looked like very powerful fools. However, even those countries could barely keep the Life Presidents in line.
This play just goes to show that a mixture pride, ignorance, and heavy doses of power, can make any person extremely dangerous. In fact, those were the qualities of a number of real-life African leaders who inspired Wole Soyinka to write this play.
I highly recommend this satire. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was its abrupt ending. Everything else I thoroughly enjoyed – I smiled several times. This was the first of Wole Soyinka’s works that I’ve read. I look forward to reading more. :)
September 17, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads # Challenge 2025
Wole Soyinka’s *A Play of Giants* is one of those theatrical experiences that leaves an imprint far beyond the performance itself, a work that fuses history, politics, and myth into a complex meditation on power and responsibility. I directed this play in 2003, during my JNU days, and the memory of staging it still carries a vivid intensity.
Unlike a conventional narrative, Soyinka’s play operates in the interstices of history and allegory, demanding from its director, actors, and audience an active negotiation with both text and context.
At its core, the play dramatises the ambitions and follies of political leaders, situating personal ambition within the machinery of national and global forces. Soyinka’s “giants” are figures of immense authority, yet he humanises them through moments of moral contradiction, vulnerability, and poetic reflection.
Directing the play in 2003, I was acutely aware of how these historical and allegorical dynamics resonated with contemporary political realities in India and beyond. The universality of power—its seductions, its corruptions, and its tragic consequences—made the rehearsal room a space of intense ethical inquiry, not merely artistic interpretation.
Stylistically, Soyinka blends the ceremonial with the naturalistic and the lyric with the visceral. The language demands careful attention: lines are layered with cultural, historical, and philosophical resonances, and the cadences of speech carry both rhythm and symbolic weight. Staging these elements required a choreography of thought and action, where pauses, silences, and gestures became as meaningful as the dialogue itself. The play is a theatre of reflection as much as action, and the director’s task is to preserve the tension between spectacle and contemplation.
One striking aspect of the play is its structural complexity. Scenes unfold in a quasi-historical sequence, yet time and space are often fluid, reflecting Soyinka’s engagement with memory, myth, and political critique. Directing this fluidity demanded inventive staging, careful pacing, and an awareness of both the macrocosm of political history and the microcosm of human interaction. The interplay of past and present, fact and allegory, makes *A Play of Giants* feel eerily postmodern in its refusal to be fully linear or easily categorised.
The thematic core of the play resonates across readings and stagings: the tension between idealism and pragmatism, the seductive dangers of power, and the ethical responsibilities of leadership. In the context of JNU, where political debate and activism were constant, these themes acquired an almost lived immediacy. Rehearsals often became spaces for discussion as much as for performance, interrogating the implications of governance, ambition, and moral accountability. Soyinka’s work insists that theatre is not escapism; it is a lens through which to examine societal structures and human frailty alike.
Reflecting now, decades later, I realise how directing *A Play of Giants* was both a professional challenge and a personal education. The experience illuminated the elasticity of performance, the interpretive possibilities of text, and the ethical dimensions of theatre. Soyinka’s play does not simply present historical actors; it asks directors, performers, and audiences to confront their own assumptions about power, morality, and human aspiration.
Ultimately, *A Play of Giants* exemplifies Soyinka’s mastery of theatre as a tool for reflection, critique, and revelation. Directing it in 2003 was a formative encounter with the intersection of artistry and ethical inquiry, a reminder that theatre, at its best, is a dialogue across time, space, and consciousness.
Even years later, its lessons remain urgent: in the realm of power, history repeats in cycles of ambition and folly, and the task of the thoughtful observer—be they director, actor, or audience—is to witness, interrogate, and learn.
Wole Soyinka’s *A Play of Giants* is one of those theatrical experiences that leaves an imprint far beyond the performance itself, a work that fuses history, politics, and myth into a complex meditation on power and responsibility. I directed this play in 2003, during my JNU days, and the memory of staging it still carries a vivid intensity.
Unlike a conventional narrative, Soyinka’s play operates in the interstices of history and allegory, demanding from its director, actors, and audience an active negotiation with both text and context.
At its core, the play dramatises the ambitions and follies of political leaders, situating personal ambition within the machinery of national and global forces. Soyinka’s “giants” are figures of immense authority, yet he humanises them through moments of moral contradiction, vulnerability, and poetic reflection.
Directing the play in 2003, I was acutely aware of how these historical and allegorical dynamics resonated with contemporary political realities in India and beyond. The universality of power—its seductions, its corruptions, and its tragic consequences—made the rehearsal room a space of intense ethical inquiry, not merely artistic interpretation.
Stylistically, Soyinka blends the ceremonial with the naturalistic and the lyric with the visceral. The language demands careful attention: lines are layered with cultural, historical, and philosophical resonances, and the cadences of speech carry both rhythm and symbolic weight. Staging these elements required a choreography of thought and action, where pauses, silences, and gestures became as meaningful as the dialogue itself. The play is a theatre of reflection as much as action, and the director’s task is to preserve the tension between spectacle and contemplation.
One striking aspect of the play is its structural complexity. Scenes unfold in a quasi-historical sequence, yet time and space are often fluid, reflecting Soyinka’s engagement with memory, myth, and political critique. Directing this fluidity demanded inventive staging, careful pacing, and an awareness of both the macrocosm of political history and the microcosm of human interaction. The interplay of past and present, fact and allegory, makes *A Play of Giants* feel eerily postmodern in its refusal to be fully linear or easily categorised.
The thematic core of the play resonates across readings and stagings: the tension between idealism and pragmatism, the seductive dangers of power, and the ethical responsibilities of leadership. In the context of JNU, where political debate and activism were constant, these themes acquired an almost lived immediacy. Rehearsals often became spaces for discussion as much as for performance, interrogating the implications of governance, ambition, and moral accountability. Soyinka’s work insists that theatre is not escapism; it is a lens through which to examine societal structures and human frailty alike.
Reflecting now, decades later, I realise how directing *A Play of Giants* was both a professional challenge and a personal education. The experience illuminated the elasticity of performance, the interpretive possibilities of text, and the ethical dimensions of theatre. Soyinka’s play does not simply present historical actors; it asks directors, performers, and audiences to confront their own assumptions about power, morality, and human aspiration.
Ultimately, *A Play of Giants* exemplifies Soyinka’s mastery of theatre as a tool for reflection, critique, and revelation. Directing it in 2003 was a formative encounter with the intersection of artistry and ethical inquiry, a reminder that theatre, at its best, is a dialogue across time, space, and consciousness.
Even years later, its lessons remain urgent: in the realm of power, history repeats in cycles of ambition and folly, and the task of the thoughtful observer—be they director, actor, or audience—is to witness, interrogate, and learn.
February 15, 2023
Wole Soyinka's A Play of Giants is a good step in understanding the psychology of dictators, how they always want to have their way, and then wonder why no one ever wants to be around them. The inner workings of the average dictator is thus brilliantly demonstrated in the 1984 published literary piece. It is just so draining to live around such types as every action or response is remoulded or interpreted to fit some prejudicial schema designed by the dictator. Any difference of opinion is easily trashed as evidence of treachery, folly or ignorance. And while not all Africans are dictators and vice versa, I will argue that perhaps some sentiments of dictators like Amin are deeply rooted in the African culture and experience.
For instance, the dictatorial compulsion of simply obeying an order without complain, no matter the facts of the case, can and have existed in families; where all are mandated to succumb to the whims of those in authority at all cost without dialogue. It doesn't matter even if such whims eventually sinks the ship, at which point everyone suffers. In the play, we find this demonstrated in dialogues between Kamini on the upper hand and the Sculptor, Chairman, Ambassador and Secretary-General on the other side.
The Chairman of the Bugara Central Bank after being forced to explain why the World Bank refused to accept a loan request immediately finds himself gasping for breath in a toilet bowl. A sculptor initially charged by an independent organization to sculpt a statue of Kamini is beaten up to ensure the statue is ready in some few hours, in spite of the excess additions instructed by Kamini on the same project. Others who forsee a similar fate escape before the prophecy is materialized. A notable example is Dr. Kiwawa who disappeared the very day they were to travel for the UN Assembly. Thus, in the play, you either stayed to suffer or escaped to give your life some chance.
Now on the issue of correlating dictatorship with the African experience, I do not intend to argue all Africans are Amins. That will be a preposterous position on my part. Rather I mean to indicate that the seeds needed to sow an Amin isn't foreign or far-fetched. On the contrary, it is so easy to have a person in power elevate themselves to divine status if their primary socialization modeled those in authority as sages without the proclivity for folly; thereby overruling any possibility for suggestions and criticism.
While this is an anecdote, I find that some of my Ghanaian counterparts, especially those hailing from northern and ewe homes may still smell Amin, albeit without the stench of blood and scum Amin tends to evoke. Our fathers will not mutilate us, but they may keep us from genuinely expressing ourselves in the way and manner evoked by Kamini. Kamini never outrightly states suggestions are impossible, he only makes it difficult for the free flow of genuine suggestions by indirectly indicating the possibility of some ramifications. In the case of Kamini the threat could be death itself, in our homes the threat may be the revoking of some privileges or the absence of familial support. Moreover, dialogue is usually killed on arrival, for the follower has to be overly conscious of the right words to use so as to not unleash the beast in the dictator.
Another insight obtained from Soyinka’s A Play of Giants pertains to how the average dictator is so consumed by paranoia because no one gets close. Perhaps they might be plotting against me, they cry, forgetting that the will for peace and safety is not annulled by being a follower.
The worst part of living with a dictator comes from the annihilation of the personal agency of those supposed to follow. The follower just cannot get anything right. And it's not necessarily because the follower does not know how to follow the rules. Rather, it's simply because the whims of the dictators is rarely fixed, shifting within seconds for something entirely different. Dictators give so many rules to the point of being caught up in them. However, the sacrilege will be to indicate the dictator initiated the confusion by providing multiple rules at a time. Folly is alien to the dictator and so the fault always has to be from the follower.
Another trait of dictators, maybe not indicated in Soyinka’s play, will be the assumption that followers may simply intuit their desires at every point in time. This may explain the automated anger unleashed on followers when what they will fails to materialize. There is no redemption within the system of the dictator. The various self-imposed exiles of some persons who manage to escape military regimes or state dictatorships is as a result of this one fact. Within the context of the family, the phenomenon may be evinced in the outcome of a prodigal son or daughter who while being promised a life of luxury decides to go out there and suffer.
In a dictatorial home, you are a plaything for the satisfaction of the dictator’s whims. When you defend yourself it means you are arrogant, when you stay shut it means you are guilty. When you eat, there's a complain of wastage of food and when you don't there's still a complain of wastage. When you talk you are loud, when you do not you are holding something against someone. Thus, in the confines of the dictator there is absolutely no expression of the individual to be freely accepted on the content of the individual in question. Rather expression must and should always be affirmed by the litmus test of the dictator.
Parents in nursing homes may wonder why their kids hardly visit. A child who gets to breathe some fresh air out there in the wild of boarding school rarely calls and it suddenly seems as though the child in question was ungrateful, malevolent and vile. Forgetting that each time the child called the conversation was more of an interview which almost all the time ended in some negative remark.
The play also explains how person's may support and cheer on for dictators who are obviously wrong in spite of their intellectual prowess and wealth of common sense. in Soyinka's own words, he had the opportunity of engaging, at first hand, politicians, intellectuals and even Heads of State in the effort to expose the truth about Uganda under Idi Amin. I quote Soyinka’s preface to the play "My experience in the majority of cases was that such ignorance was willed, not fortuitous. The tone, the varied disguises of their 'ignorance’ left me with the confirmation of a long held suspicion that power calls to power, that the brutality of power (it's most strident self-manifestation) evokes a conspiratorial craving for the phenomenon of 'success’ which cuts across all human occupations".
Dictatorship is stagnant and limiting as it stands the risk of ignoring the creative prospects of autonomous individuals. To be an autonomous being signals the presence of a distinct will; that which can only be actualized by some form of social contract where varying interests or wills are negotiated through dialogue and the respect for others and their views. Of course, this is the caveat if only the parties involved are genuinely interested in maintaining not just peace, but that which Johan Galtung refers to as positive peace. A peace that encourages the continuous restoration of relationships amid the bargaining process.
Wole Soyinka’s play is a short step in understanding the complex issue of dealing with dictators. In some few pages, he demonstrates the torture of the dictatorial sentiment, that which should be avoided and checked given the unnecessary trauma and distress caused. The play is a great recommendation to anyone who finds the revulsion for dictatorship odd, particularly for the lack of experiencing dictatorial regimes.
For instance, the dictatorial compulsion of simply obeying an order without complain, no matter the facts of the case, can and have existed in families; where all are mandated to succumb to the whims of those in authority at all cost without dialogue. It doesn't matter even if such whims eventually sinks the ship, at which point everyone suffers. In the play, we find this demonstrated in dialogues between Kamini on the upper hand and the Sculptor, Chairman, Ambassador and Secretary-General on the other side.
The Chairman of the Bugara Central Bank after being forced to explain why the World Bank refused to accept a loan request immediately finds himself gasping for breath in a toilet bowl. A sculptor initially charged by an independent organization to sculpt a statue of Kamini is beaten up to ensure the statue is ready in some few hours, in spite of the excess additions instructed by Kamini on the same project. Others who forsee a similar fate escape before the prophecy is materialized. A notable example is Dr. Kiwawa who disappeared the very day they were to travel for the UN Assembly. Thus, in the play, you either stayed to suffer or escaped to give your life some chance.
Now on the issue of correlating dictatorship with the African experience, I do not intend to argue all Africans are Amins. That will be a preposterous position on my part. Rather I mean to indicate that the seeds needed to sow an Amin isn't foreign or far-fetched. On the contrary, it is so easy to have a person in power elevate themselves to divine status if their primary socialization modeled those in authority as sages without the proclivity for folly; thereby overruling any possibility for suggestions and criticism.
While this is an anecdote, I find that some of my Ghanaian counterparts, especially those hailing from northern and ewe homes may still smell Amin, albeit without the stench of blood and scum Amin tends to evoke. Our fathers will not mutilate us, but they may keep us from genuinely expressing ourselves in the way and manner evoked by Kamini. Kamini never outrightly states suggestions are impossible, he only makes it difficult for the free flow of genuine suggestions by indirectly indicating the possibility of some ramifications. In the case of Kamini the threat could be death itself, in our homes the threat may be the revoking of some privileges or the absence of familial support. Moreover, dialogue is usually killed on arrival, for the follower has to be overly conscious of the right words to use so as to not unleash the beast in the dictator.
Another insight obtained from Soyinka’s A Play of Giants pertains to how the average dictator is so consumed by paranoia because no one gets close. Perhaps they might be plotting against me, they cry, forgetting that the will for peace and safety is not annulled by being a follower.
The worst part of living with a dictator comes from the annihilation of the personal agency of those supposed to follow. The follower just cannot get anything right. And it's not necessarily because the follower does not know how to follow the rules. Rather, it's simply because the whims of the dictators is rarely fixed, shifting within seconds for something entirely different. Dictators give so many rules to the point of being caught up in them. However, the sacrilege will be to indicate the dictator initiated the confusion by providing multiple rules at a time. Folly is alien to the dictator and so the fault always has to be from the follower.
Another trait of dictators, maybe not indicated in Soyinka’s play, will be the assumption that followers may simply intuit their desires at every point in time. This may explain the automated anger unleashed on followers when what they will fails to materialize. There is no redemption within the system of the dictator. The various self-imposed exiles of some persons who manage to escape military regimes or state dictatorships is as a result of this one fact. Within the context of the family, the phenomenon may be evinced in the outcome of a prodigal son or daughter who while being promised a life of luxury decides to go out there and suffer.
In a dictatorial home, you are a plaything for the satisfaction of the dictator’s whims. When you defend yourself it means you are arrogant, when you stay shut it means you are guilty. When you eat, there's a complain of wastage of food and when you don't there's still a complain of wastage. When you talk you are loud, when you do not you are holding something against someone. Thus, in the confines of the dictator there is absolutely no expression of the individual to be freely accepted on the content of the individual in question. Rather expression must and should always be affirmed by the litmus test of the dictator.
Parents in nursing homes may wonder why their kids hardly visit. A child who gets to breathe some fresh air out there in the wild of boarding school rarely calls and it suddenly seems as though the child in question was ungrateful, malevolent and vile. Forgetting that each time the child called the conversation was more of an interview which almost all the time ended in some negative remark.
The play also explains how person's may support and cheer on for dictators who are obviously wrong in spite of their intellectual prowess and wealth of common sense. in Soyinka's own words, he had the opportunity of engaging, at first hand, politicians, intellectuals and even Heads of State in the effort to expose the truth about Uganda under Idi Amin. I quote Soyinka’s preface to the play "My experience in the majority of cases was that such ignorance was willed, not fortuitous. The tone, the varied disguises of their 'ignorance’ left me with the confirmation of a long held suspicion that power calls to power, that the brutality of power (it's most strident self-manifestation) evokes a conspiratorial craving for the phenomenon of 'success’ which cuts across all human occupations".
Dictatorship is stagnant and limiting as it stands the risk of ignoring the creative prospects of autonomous individuals. To be an autonomous being signals the presence of a distinct will; that which can only be actualized by some form of social contract where varying interests or wills are negotiated through dialogue and the respect for others and their views. Of course, this is the caveat if only the parties involved are genuinely interested in maintaining not just peace, but that which Johan Galtung refers to as positive peace. A peace that encourages the continuous restoration of relationships amid the bargaining process.
Wole Soyinka’s play is a short step in understanding the complex issue of dealing with dictators. In some few pages, he demonstrates the torture of the dictatorial sentiment, that which should be avoided and checked given the unnecessary trauma and distress caused. The play is a great recommendation to anyone who finds the revulsion for dictatorship odd, particularly for the lack of experiencing dictatorial regimes.
May 9, 2017
A gripping and fantasic account of how absolute political power gives birth to fascism. Pitched in the bitter years after independence of Africa, the play brings together three great dictators of Africa, ruthless in their demonstration of power, boasts of their glory and how the innocents lie grovelling at their mercy. However Soyinka shows that there is an end to totalitarianism. The end of the play is absolutely marvellously penned. It shows that the face of oppression, the State is always the same, everytime and everywhere. There is no face of power. It is flowing everywhere.
March 28, 2024
Shout out to Wole Soyinka! One thing about him and I guess is very common with other 1960s African writers is how they seek to investigate the psyche of the African- particularly because of the harm caused by slavery and colonization. His book focuses on extremist African leaders such as Mobutu Sese Soko and Jean-Bedel Bokassa, and I love how he makes it so clear which African leaders he is referring to! Before I digress, I found it fascinating that this constant need by the leaders to eliminate all "believed" forms of growing rebellion and constantly re-examine who was on their side stems from their anxiety and I guess unconscious awareness that they ought to have left power a while ago. To constantly validate their hold on power, they eliminate all who are against them and instead blame the media for infecting their people with negative ideas of their leadership of their country. The point of this tangent is that you should read it and put your thoughts too!
October 19, 2021
After reading about the pettiness and brutality of these Life Presidents I can't help but think- Hitler is not so bad after all (he even had jews he liked). Did a course on Peace and Conflict Studies and there was a part that focused on National Security which one of the definitions for it was when the leaders substitute their own personal security for national security just so they can stay in power when the populace tries to oust them (I paraphrase) and any threat against their position is a threat to national security. I really liked when he smacked Batey, the brownnoser probably thought he was part of the inner circle until reality caught up with him. Some people like to talk about how much of a joke democracy is. To a certain extent they're right, but I'll take the joke which is democracy over this kind of totalitarianistic despotism anyday.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews