![]() All readers – Ibekwe in Lagos, Ataman in Kayseri, Lars in Bremen, Abhinav in Assam, or Jane in Ann Arbor - will see and hear this bus and capture it in their minds. But if a writer describes it as “a beat-up squeaking yellow-painted bus with a constant metallic rattle”, everyone, including the Lagos reader, will have a clear image of such a bus, as it has been rendered in vivid detail. There is no doubt that a reader who lives in Lagos might be at an advantage. He might praise himself, or be praised by defenders of this kind of politicised provincialism, for having been brave or authentic. Suppose the African author wants to write about the molue, the iconic Lagos bus, and simply refers to it mid-sentence. Such a writer will almost always falter in his writing, and yield, more often than not, to telling rather than showing. Writers who are most concerned with provincialism – with pleasing a particular base of readers – are probably not concerned with conveying “the vivid sense of event”. When we compare Soyinka’s view with Imaseun’s argument, we see glaring disparities. To me this is, in many ways, a precise thesis on creative writing, a rephrasing of the most cardinal of all writing rules: show don’t tell. To preserve the movement and fluidity of this association seems to be the best approach for keeping faith with the author’s style and sensibility. ![]() In what I mentally refer to as the “enthusiastic” passages of his writing, the essence of Fagunwa is the fusion of sound and action. Fagunwa’s concern is to convey the vivid sense of event, and a translator must select equivalents for mere auxiliaries where these serve the essential purpose better than the precise original. Soyinka concedes the point, but asserts:īut neither toad nor lizard is the object of action or interest to the hero Akaraogun or his creator Fagunwa at this point of narration. This aroused a protest from a Yoruba critic who complained about Soyinka’s choice, noting that agiliti is a lizard not a toad. Soyinka describes how he translated the phrase “ Mo nmi ho bi agiliti” as “my breath came in rapid bloats like the hawing of a toad”. For example: “If you write ‘He dipped his hand into the eba’, a phrase will follow to explain that eba is ‘that yellow globular mashed potato clone made from Cassava chippings’.” His frustration is evident: “You’re like, ‘Arrghhh, don’t explain it, they can Google it!’”Ĭontrast this with Wole Soyinka, writing in the introduction to his new translation of Yoruba novelist DO Fagunwa’s work. In a recent article, Nigerian writer Eghosa Imaseun argued that provincial writing is always political, objecting to the way things are explained unnecessarily for international audiences. Others, many of whom live in Africa, have argued that the solution is to play up their identity to an extreme – seeking to be read chiefly because of their origin rather than in spite of it. ![]() One reaction comes from a group of writers – including Taiye Selasi – who have sought to nix the idea of the “African” writer’s identity. In the past few years, writers have responded in various ways. This question, I came to discover, is frequently asked of writers who have a similar provenance to mine. W hen I published my novel, The Fishermen, last year, one of the most common – and most surprising – questions I received was about my intended audience.
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