Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This is an account of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s time in prison. He spent a month and a day in prison in 1993. He recorded the daily occurrences of what happened to him during that time. For me what makes him important is that he didn’t just talk about things in his writing, he also exemplified what he believed.
Your first choice is Ken Saro-Wiwa, A Month and a Day.
This is an account of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s time in prison. He spent a month and a day in prison in 1993. He recorded the daily occurrences during that time.
Why was he in prison?
Well, he was arrested by the military government for what they called his part in electoral disturbances. But the beauty of the book is that after the opening section, the introductory moment where he was arrested, the book takes you back into the history of his involvement with the pro democracy movement and with his role in setting up the movement for the survival of the Ogoni people (MOSOP). The Ogoni people were fighting, and still are fighting, against the destruction of the environment in their land. So that is the real reason why he was arrested.
Can you explain why he is such an important figure in Nigeria?
He was a writer, an essayist and a dramatist – he was so prolific. And during the 1980s there was his popular TV programme called Bassey and Company – everybody watched it. This was mainly light-hearted comedy. Then gradually he became more political. I guess with the formation of the movement for the survival of the Ogoni people he began to confront the government more directly. We had a military dictatorship in the 1990s.
So for me what makes him important is that he didn’t just talk about things in his writing, he also exemplified what he believed. He accepted the consequences and he spoke out without fear. You can’t help but respect that kind of commitment; and in the end he was killed for his beliefs. He was hanged by the military government. When you take into account that he could have kept quiet, or even joined the status quo, or gone into exile, you realise how courageous he must have been. You realise how important the land must have been to him and how seriously he took his duty to give back something after all his success. This kind of thing, this exemplary courage, still goes on, so this is a very interesting example of what some African writers go through.
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Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. His first novel, Waiting for an Angel, won the Caine Prize in 2001. In 2002 he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York. He is contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review and in 2006 co-edited the British Council’s anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time was published in February 2007 and his latest novel, Oil on Water, is out soon. He currently teaches creative writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and children. He says Nigeria has a tradition of storytelling. ‘Before we were over taken by TV and video games it was very much part of our culture to tell stories. And this tradition still persists on the streets… you will see people spend hours just talking to each other!’
