The New Yorker Radio Hour - Wole Soyinka on His New Satire of Corruption and Fundamentalism

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Wole Soyinka is a giant of world literature. A Nobel laureate, he’s written more than two dozen plays, a vast amount of poetry, several memoirs, and countless essays and short stories—but, up until recently, only two novels. His third novel was published this past September, forty-eight years after the previous one. It's called “Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth.” The book is both a political satire and a murder mystery involving four friends, with subplots that include a secret society dealing in human body parts and more corruption than any one country can bear.  Like his cousin the Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, Soyinka has made social commentary integral to his work. Soyinka’s journey into political activism began at a young age, and, in 1965, when he was twenty-one, he was arrested for armed robbery. But Soyinka tells Vinson Cunningham that political opposition didn’t come naturally to him. “I love my peace of mind and my tranquility,” he says, “[but] I cannot attain that if I have not attended to an issue or problem which I know is . . . manifesting itself in a dehumanizing way in others.” “Chronicles” explores not only how the governments are corrupt but the effect of corruption on societies and peoples. Soyinka also talks about why he waited so long to write another novel, and what the medium offers that theatre does not. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In 1965, five years after Nigeria gained its independence, the playwright, Wally Shoyenka, was already known as an opposition figure. Authorities falsely accused him of armed robbery. And before the country's civil war at the late 60s, Shoyenka tried to avert fighting. He was accused of conspiring with rebels, and was then imprisoned by the Nigerian government. He's a writer with an astonishing history of putting himself on the line for his political and social commitments. Shoyenka has received the Nobel

Prize for Literature. He's written more than two dozen plays, a vast amount of poetry, several memoirs, essays, and short stories, and just two novels. His third novel is out now, nearly five decades after the last one. It's called Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. It's both a political satire and a murder mystery. It involves four friends, a secret society dealing in human body parts, and more corruption than any one country can bear. Staff writer Vincent Cunningham spoke to Wolle Sheenka at his home in Nigeria. I really want to talk to you about chronicles from the land of the happiest people on Earth, a title that I love. I heard that you've been thinking about this story for many years now.

How does it feel to have it out in the world? It's been a little bit overwhelming, I think. I wasn't expecting this kind of reception of it. I mean, it's just part of my own creative continuum in a different format. You know, it's like taking time off from theater to write a novel. Yeah. This is your third novel. And of course, you're known most prolifically for your works of theater.

But what is it that the novel does for you that theater does it? This change in form. Is it, are there necessities that it meets? that theater does it and vice versa. What's the form about for you? What the novel does for me as a medium of expression is to assuage the masochist in me. Because the novel is very taxing.

Taxing in the sense that it's tempting to go in so many directions. Theater for me is more focused. When you're a narrator, and you're juggling a number of characters and they insist on wandering in very willfully in directions, which you did not preview, you know, and then you forget where you last saw them and so on. I really praise novelists, those whose mitya is a novel. They have a hard time at it.

Yeah, I mean, but you do in this way, and it's interesting to hear you talk about them as in some always willing themselves, but you offer us this total panoply of great characters. There's a crooked religious leader, there's a politician, a sort of earnest diplomat, a famous doctor. Did you, in the course of writing this book, was there a favorite character that you aligned on? Was there one who was especially willful and sort of surprised you in different ways? There's no question at all that a number of the characters were quote-unquote inspired. or triggered into being by personal encounters at two great pains to ensure

that some of the villains knew that they provided the base material. And in fact, I haven't met one of them since the novel came out and came up to me. And I said, well, you come into me, I hope you realize that you were this in the novel. And it was a politician. And like a good politician, said, oh, prof, that's okay. but I really want to discuss a certain issues with you in the novel,

forget my character. So the novel does give one that latitude, I must confess, and then you can play variations far more than in theatre. I think theatre is almost pre-written. By that I mean, they are more constricted in case of the theatre. And that is one of the reasons why tackling a theme like this human tumult in which I've been existing,

watching others survive in my way, watching that deterioration of society. The novel intuitively struck me as the only medium in which I could actually purge myself of this oppressive sense of a society going haywire.

It's interesting. There is this sense, this dark sense of a, as you say, a society going haywire. And it's contrasted against this wonderful title, you know, the land of the happiest people on earth. Now I heard that this was inspired by the quote unquote world happiness report where Nigeria was rated one of the happiest countries in the world. First of all, is that true? And what did that reality? If so, what did that present to you artistically? Well, when I saw that poll, that world report, I thought, look at these people laughing at us.

Why are they so cruel? Why are they doing this? And then I realized it was supposed to be a serious poll, a serious estimate, supposed to be objective and analytical, even scientific. And so I looked into this. I said, maybe I'm in the wrong place. But when I looked around, it is still a society which I recognize as my own, as one in which I functioned. So it stuck in my head for quite a while. This was some years ago.

And when I began working on it, it actually began with other titles. Eventually, I suddenly realized, oh, wait a minute, that estimation, that analysis is the exact title I've been looking for. You know, happiness is such a fraught idea. America, of course, we've sort of encoded it into our national myth, you know, the pursuit of happiness, has all these. Yes, yes, me. What does it mean for you? Because of course, can be totally vapid, fun-seeking surface sort of epicureanism, I guess. But it can also speak to a real joy. What does it mean for you? And why did it fit so well? It fits so well, of course, because it's an ironic. This country, the people in this nation are not the happiest by no strength of the

imagination. And yet at the same time, if they went deep enough in society, I think they would flee or consign this nation to the place to be during your, what's that season of yours when you hang skeletons all over the place? Halloween. Maybe this is Halloween nation. And then I can understand it. Right, right. But then again, as I was saying, you do encounter those who extract possibly a measure of contentment, of fulfillment, even of the most meagre kind. They are buoyed either by religion or by an ingrained traditional philosopher.

that the worst is yet to come and therefore you better enjoy the present because Nigerians do celebrate I mean that is not a lie and those people all over the world where Nigerians are they do salute Nigerians for their spirit of celebration

which is why it took pains to ensure that at least one character represented what the pursuit of happiness might be through creativity, through just love of others, through just making others happy, if only for a few moments. So it's a mishmash of ironies, of acknowledgments, of concession, of even a measure of salute to the people. I hope that measure comes out, the element comes out.

Staff writer Vincent Cunningham speaking with Nobel laureate, Wally Shoyenka. More to come. this issue of happiness in the different places where it can be found or not found, you know, where it can be promised but not delivered perhaps. One of those is religion. And a lot of this book turns on a kind of an upswing in religious fundamentalism. Is it okay if I read a very short passage that I just love from this book? It's about a preacher who we get to know better on. His name is Papa Divina. And he has this epiphany. He's on this kind of long comic journey across West Africa. We see him in Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone. And, you know, and he has a epiphany.

he's in Ghana and he has this epiphany. He's just kind of made this pun on the word a site of prophecy or prophet's sight. And he says this. He looked nervously around hoping that no one else had caught that creative slip, or at least that it had not registered with anyone in that audience with apostolic ambitions. The flash momentarily unnerved him as it inserted profound doubts in his mind. Could it be that he was, after all, the genuine article, that he had indeed responded to an authentic call to prophecy?

prophesite. Why had all his predecessors failed to formulate such an exquisite, indeed malefluous name for a place of spiritual quest? Could it be that he was, unbeknownst to himself till now, truly called? This person who's clearly a charlatan of a kind, but almost convinces himself that he's not in certain ways. I wanted to talk to you just about this emphasis on fundamentalism. What role did that play for you? You know, Some of the greatest shallotans of religion, of the religious profession, are really very likable people, very lovable people. First of all, their performers, they enjoy performing.

Now, if you enjoy what you're doing, you're a happy person, and you infect others with some of that happiness. So even while you are, you know, blathering pietitudes and knowing very well that you are conning your congregation, you do produce not just happiness, sometimes rapture, genuine, authentic rapture. And so I find very complex people, the genuine religionists. Of course, some of them are just sinister, the fundamentalists, for instance. both of Christianity and of Islam and Hinduism, for instance. You have the fundamentalist.

All religions have their fundamentalist sectors, and those are really sinister, dangerous people. They have no sense of humor. They cannot see the pathetic side of life. They cannot even look at themselves in the mirror and get themselves the pat on the back and say, you shalotan, but today wasn't bad. You know, they're capable of it.

Yeah. They just saw them just kill the belief. That's it. You kill anybody who doesn't aspire to your level of malevolent conviction. I'd love to talk to you about, you know, over the course of your career, and I feel career is not as capacious aware as I want. you've been able to bring your activism and your intellectualism and your sort of art all onto the same plane, all operating at once. I learned that, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is Felakuti your cousin?

Well, fella. Yes. Yes, my cousin. And Nicola Kuo, yes, of course, yes. I had not known that. And it struck me as so apt because here was another person whose art and intellect and political sense. were all inter-implicated altogether. I wonder if just your upbringing made you feel that as a responsibility.

Was that a natural step for you to be sort of an activist, politically aware, a true citizen in the deep sense of that word, and also an artist at the same time? It remains a mystery to me. And why should it be a mystery? It's because, basically, I would rather not be all these things, not. I was an activist. Ask myself, I don't know how often. How on earth did you get on this path?

Why don't you just stick to what you love, really love doing? He's writing bits of poetry, writing plays, directing plays, exchanging ideas, getting into arguments simply because we live also with abstractions. and anybody who believes in the essence of things, the theory of things, loves the discourse about them. And this I enjoy, which is also why I'm also a teacher by profession. I would rather be doing all those things, honestly. But I end up using that expression, a closet masochist for myself. Because I'm doing certain things which I know I would rather not be doing.

But I also love my peace of mind, my tranquility. And I cannot attain that. That's a contradiction. I know I cannot attain that if I have not attended to an issue, a problem which I know is pernicious, which I know is manifesting itself in a dehumanizing way in others, whether human beings, environment, child abuse, for instance. So we're not just talking about politics.

We're just talking about humanity. This is one of me. I remain restless when I see such situations. And the only way I can attain that peace, which I love so much, and which I only very sparsely enjoy, that's what drives one out again and again and again using other means when once literature fails one feels to address the issue.

Then of course, you have to address it frontally, physically, by whatever means. Yeah. I love how you just said that your pursuit of tranquility has in some ways required that you get yourself into trouble in these other ways, you know? It seems like there's not much, Glory to be had among your own people when you are confronting them in this way.

It seems like a fraught position. Just on a personal level, have you made peace with that, or is it a constant? It's a constant. If I am to be at peace with myself, I must confront the unacceptable from whichever side. Of course, the state has certain statutory responsibilities, so the state gets it more than the people themselves. I love a quote in your book. There are two friends who really form the heart of this book who are speaking at one point, and one of them delivers one of the book's most affecting lines for me.

He says, something is broken, beyond race, outside color or history, something has cracked, can't be put back together. That's something, that sort of ineffable something, that's beyond all of the ideology and all of anything that we can put our finger to. I wonder if writing this book helped you put a name to that ineffable something and have maybe the politics of the last few years helped you to identify or reconsider what it might be. You know, I've tried to put my finger on it, and I end up with a question, what is human? And I think that's what we've lost.

It has gone on for too long. that condition of losing what is human. From the most profound aspects of our relationships to the most trivial, we lost what is human. As a way to say goodbye, we mentioned Felakuti, your late cousin. Do you have a favorite song of his? My favorite is Zumbi.

The reason, actually, is one that's not appreciated by most people. That song, Zumbi, applies not merely to the military in terms of their conduct to the people in this nation. But zombie, and that is what Nigerians have not yet realized. They have become mimic people. They act like zombies. They expect orders, even if those orders aren't tolerable. They develop habits that they should not develop.

So when I hear zombie, I see not many. Mele, SARS, those murdering police. I see not melee the bullying soldiers. I see also what Nigerians have become. So I enjoy zombie on many more levels than the ivory Nigerian does. Thank you so much. This has been wonderful, and I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you.

Staff writer Vincent Cunningham, speaking with Nobel laureate, Wally Sheenka. His new novel is Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. And that's it for us this week. And if you missed anything from today's program, you can find it all on the podcast of our show, wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrador. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Calalia, David Krasnow, Gophane and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino.

And we had additional help from Priscilla Al-A-Labie and Harrison Heathline. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.