Böcker av Tanure Ojaide

This work takes in two collections of poetry. The poems of Delta Blues protests against the environmental degradation of the Niger Delta, and the devastation unleashed upon local populations, victims, and caught up in the race for oil. The younger poet dedicates his work to Ken Saro Wiwa, and other civil-rights activists. He writes about the irony of their mortality, which was, their last resort and only threat; their death was the final protest. The poet contrasts the natural heritage of the river, a vital food and water source, with barrels of oil, which bring little benefit to the people of the river. He believes that remembering the past and the dead may be the only way of preventing history repeating itself. Ojaide has won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the Africa region and the Association of Nigerian Authors' Poetry Prize twice. He has performed and been translated around the world, and is regarded as a leading voice amongst the new (younger) generation.

Here is a collection of selected and new short stories by Tanure Ojaide. Three stories from his two previous collections The Debt Collector and The Old Man in a State House are included along with new diverse stories exploring topics and themes not present in his previous works. The stories could be realistic but are fictional, Ojaide writes memoir, poetry and fiction in the forms of short story and novel with common threads connecting his writing irrespective of genre.

The Beauty I Have Seen. A Trilogy comprises three phases in a poetic journey, ranging from the poet (here called a minstrel) as a public figure, a traveller and observer of humanity, to one grounded in the landscape and fate of his native land. In the various sections of "The Beauty I have Seen", "Doors of the Forest" and "Flow and other Poems", Tanure Ojaide expresses multifarious experiences, private and public, that capture the poet's sensitive life in sensuous images. In these poems that flow like a narrative, form and content fuse into a mature poetic voice at once passionate and restrained, relaxed and poignant.

In his new collection, Nigeria's leading poet and literary scholar reflects on social and political themes, popular culture and the impact of technology on tradition, religious evangelism in the indigenous culture, environmental degradation, home, migration and return.

Contemporary African literature captures the African experience in history and politics in a multiplicity of ways. Tanure Ojaide's Indigeneity, Globalization, and African Literature: Personally Speaking belongs with a well-established tradition of personal reflections on literature by African creative writer-critics.