On 26 September 1921, Nigerian writer, Cyprian Ekwensi, was born. Ekwensi saw himself as a custodian of Nigerian life and the patron saint of the city dweller. He wrote social commentaries where the Nigerian city or town took on the texture of a character.
The social role of the novelist—the idea of who the novelist is in society and what their responsibilities are, both self-assigned and thrust upon the author by the reader—is constantly shifting. We are, right now, living through a moment when the work that a novelist does, from the point of view of the tech disruptor, appears ripe for disruption, hence reducible to its most basic formula and easy to replicate. The novelist, once called upon to function as the ‘conscience’ or ‘interpreter’ or ‘secretary’ of society becomes within this new proposition, depersonalized and disembodied. There are many ways to worry about this. Some of them, urgent, concern issues of intellectual property theft. Others, difficult to equate to material loss, require that we simply remind ourselves why writers matter. What it means, for instance, to encounter the mind of a writer like Cyprian Ekwensi for whom the novelist in society had to be totally immersed in, and preoccupied with the theatre of society...
Every year, The Republic publishes the most ambitious writing focused on Africa, from news and analysis to long-form features.
To continue reading this article, Subscribe or Register for a Free Pass.
Already a subscriber? Log in.