The first sixteen years of my life was in Kano, Nigeria. Needless to say I appreciate all things Hausa/Arabic. I like to read magazines and non-fiction books in the Arabic script style, from right to left. I will often turn to the epilogue of books or back pages of magazines to start my reading. It was with relish that I dug into Professor Emeka Aniagolu’s book, A Tale of Two Giants: Chinua Achebe & Wole Soyinka. Reading the epilogue first, as I usually do, I was immediately reassured that the work is typical Aniagolu: forthright, refined, sagacious, authoritative, authentic, precise, bold, unapologetic and witty.
I titled this review: Sublime Lives, borrowing the phrase from the famous poem, A Psalm of Life, by the American Poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.
A Tale of Two Giants by Professor Emeka Aniagolu is a thorough, stimulating and fascinating comparative study, grounded in historico-socio-political contextual analysis of the careers, creative, autobiographical as well as scholarly and polemical works of Africa’s two literary giants: Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. Much has been written on those two literary giants, but some lines from the introduction of Aniagolu’s work, explain the primary objective of the comparative study: “. . . critical analyses that go beyond nominal renditions of content analyses to engage dynamic, socio-political, economic and cultural context analysis . . .” Context analysis being the major work the author engaged in this treatise, rather than relying solely on content analysis of the works of the two literary giants. The work boldly interrogates, analyses and confronts the historical and political contexts of motivation, intentionality and expression, that surround and animate Achebe and Soyinka’s works, their personalities and their personal experiences.
A Tale of Two Giants is a voluminous work, with 552 pages, divided into thirteen chapters, though each chapter is not numbered but takes on titles. Like episodes in a television series, each chapter title guides the reader, page by brilliant page, into knowledge of the subject. The work is luxuriant in language and content, an opulent literary feast served by Professor Emeka Aniagolu with finesse and excellence. The details and analysis in this book will satisfy even the most fastidious literary critic. At the same time, it makes for very enjoyable reading to non-literary fellows. Aniagolu’s style is enthralling, highly inspirational and witty. An instance is when in the chapter titled, Literature & Praxis, thatdelves into the literary works of Achebe and Soyinka, Professor Aniagolu wittily writes that the neat divide in creative talent between Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka – between novels and dramas respectively – “. . . remains a curious one to him, for there is nothing readily apparent in the two genres that makes their creative manifestations mutually exclusive. Except perhaps, it is the spell of the gods that kept the two literary giants confined to the vineyards of their special talents, so as to spare us all malevolent artistic comparisons!”
Professor Emeka Aniagolu taught history and politics at Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio and at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, for over 36 years. He is the author of eighteen books and several journal articles; and is also a recipient of numerous scholarly and community awards. This much acclaimed comparative study on Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, A Tale of Two Giants, is written with a professor’s sensitivity to his readers. Aniagolu does an impressive job of presenting a broad context of information in each chapter. Using history, personal notes, case studies, tables, graphs, newspaper articles and very detailed appendices; the author excels in conveying knowledge and inducing thought on myriad subjects in all the chapters, with titles such as: “Political Activism, Protest Literature & the Nobel Prize;” “Literary Style, Knowledge & African Literature;” “Sentinels & Salesmen;” “The Two Literary Giants & the Nigerian Civil War,” etc.
A few literary pundits might question Professor Emeka Aniagolu’s qualification in writing this book or of other polemicists who trespass fields to act as literary critics. Asserting his literary bona fides, in the introduction to the work, Aniagolu puts forward strong reasons why he qualifies as a literary critic/creator. He argues that he is not deterred or disqualified to engage in literary creativity or criticism by virtue of the fact that his disciplinary training was not strictly in English, and its branches. He is a political scientist and a historian who has written a number of literary works – novels, short stories, poetry and plays. Trained in excellent universities in the state of Ohio in the USA, with a background in social sciences and humanities for his undergraduate and graduate degrees, and a long teaching career in African and African American Studies, he more than qualifies to undertake this massive comparative study.