Wednesday, March 4, 2009


Volume 32, Number 4, Winter 2001




Ogunsanwo, Olatubosun.
The Dance of Death: Nigerian History and Christopher Okigbo's Poetry (review)
Research in African Literatures -

Indiana University Press...
Olatubosun Ogunsanwo - The Dance of Death: Nigerian History and Christopher Okigbo's Poetry (review) - Research in African Literatures 32:4 Research in African Literatures 32.4 (2001) 213-215 Book Review The Dance of Death: Nigerian History and Christopher Okigbo's Poetry The Dance of Death: Nigerian History and Christopher Okigbo's Poetry, by Dubem Okafor. Trenton: Africa World P, 1998. xv + 297 pp. ISBN 0-86543-555-3. The genesis of The Dance of Death is Dubem Okafor's doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota (ix). Okafor describes his book as "a traditional narratological typology [. . .] which will quickly scan the cultural political history of Nigeria from the colonial period to 1996, and attempt to provide an explanatory backdrop for subsequent events" (3). The Dance of Death has a remarkably extensive breadth, going back to the slave trade. Its main focus, however, is on Nigeria's colonial history, her formidable "twin bane of ethnicity and corruption" (25) and "linguistic cacophony" (18), all of which, Okafor argues, create a dance of death that prevents her transformation from "ties of primordalism" to a nation (7). Okafor situates within all this sociopolitical scenario Christopher Okigbo, his uncle, as the man ...

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