Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka
Review by Eleanor Updegraff
It has been forty-eight years since Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka last published a novel. Forty-eight years in which the activist and thinker, one of Nigeria’s most lauded sons and, simultaneously, most vocal critics, has produced plays, essays, poetry and memoirs, continuing to forge the unswerving path of political dissent that saw him imprisoned in the late 1960s. Forty-eight years is a long time in which to observe the development of one’s country – and the eighty-seven-year-old makes no secret of the fact that he doesn’t like what he sees. The result is Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a vast outpouring of frustration and anger at political corruption, the mismanagement of a country, unchecked violence and moral blindness. Easy to read, it is not. Yet Chronicles… is a book with a message that doubtless needs to be heard.
Set in Nigeria (unnamed, identifiable only by its major cities), Chronicles… is a labyrinthine work of fiction that weaves together several storylines – some more successful than others – into a complex narrative tapestry that is almost blinding in its intricacy. What action there is hinges largely on a ghastly underground organisation known as Human Resources, which is in the business of buying body parts from hospital mortuaries and selling them on for use in rituals (superstitious belief in the magical properties of human organs does exist in Nigeria, where it has been linked to cases of murder). After learning of these nefarious activities, a respected surgeon, Dr Kighare Menka, who is famed for working with mutilated Boko Haram victims, sets out to unmask the organisation’s leadership with the help of his long-time friend, engineer Duyole Pitan-Payne. When a bomb puts Pitan-Payne in hospital – and, later, his grave – Menka is left to fight the faceless demons alone, at the same time as trying to negotiate with unyielding family members for the repatriation of his friend’s body.
Swirling around this central plotline is a nebulous, at times impenetrable, haze of additional connected stories, which might involve a money-laundering businessman or an arson attack on a colonial country club. The most important, however, features a charlatan priest, Papa Davina, and Sir Godfrey Danfere (or Sir Goddie), the Prime Minister (or ‘People’s Steward’) of the country. Together, the two men use Papa Davina’s souped-up brand of ecumenical ministry as a front for political and moral corruption, the details of which only become more sordid the deeper we progress into the novel.
Soyinka’s main weapon of choice in Chronicles… is satire, which he deploys liberally, sometimes too heavy-handedly. This novel enters the ring with its fists up, and across 440-odd pages delivers a relentless series of blows in the form of wordplay, acronyms (Sir Goddie heads the People on the Move Party: POMP), and incredibly convoluted sentences designed to lampoon a society that is politically and spiritually corrupt at all possible levels. While many of these linguistic punches are on the nose, others fail to connect – Soyinka is giving everything he’s got here, certainly, but the sheer wall of words in this novel can make it read at times like a rather rushed, agitated attempt to hammer the message home.
This verbose style won’t be for everyone, and that is a shame: Chronicles… is a novel that deserves to be read and appreciated for its depth and sharpness of thought. Too much intellectualism may have got in the way of narrative clarity, or it could be that certain scenes would be better served by another medium: Soyinka’s talents as an essayist and playwright are evidenced by closely argued passages deploring the state of the nation, or the richly vivid scenes (a beheading at a bus stop, say) that almost seem to be unfolding on a stage.
Settle in to the whirlwind, however, and the reader is in for a madcap and atmospheric ride through contemporary Nigeria, a country that in 2011 was actually rated one of the happiest (or, at least, most optimistic) in the world. Chronicles… can make for tough reading, particularly knowing that it treads near to the truth, yet the rather pessimistic tone is compensated handsomely by the central relationship in the book: the bond of friendship between Dr Menka and Pitan-Payne that lasts even beyond the grave. While the novel may be close to the bone in many respects, the quieter, less overblown passages that deal with universal themes, such as friendship and disappointed dreams, are where it is most absorbing. Of all the characters, Dr Menka is the one who seems most authentic and considered, a figure with whom it is not hard to empathise.
Adrift in a sea of corruption to which even their oldest friends are not immune, Menka and Pitan-Payne are men who try to do the right thing. For one of them it ends badly; for the other, the fight continues – though Menka’s abrupt removal from proceedings some time before the end of the novel may suggest a lingering gloominess on the part of the author that not even his characteristically caustic wit can dispel. Quite where this leaves us or what we are supposed to do with it remains unclear. But never once in Chronicles… has Soyinka suggested that he is here to provide easy answers.
Irreverent, intellectual, and unapologetically demanding of its readers, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth is a juggernaut of a novel, a work of fiction that reads like an outpouring, a release of many years of pent-up political frustrations. Bold and chaotic, it is somehow of the moment, stylistically imperfect yet entire in its idiosyncrasy. This is literature of the dynamic kind, fed not so much by carefully honed craft as by a profound, urgent energy: both cry for help and call to arms; a response, a lament, a reckoning.
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth is published by Bloomsbury, 24th September 2021