Adewale Maja-Pearce

A Peculiar Tragedy is a critical biography of John Pepper Clark, better known as J. P. Clark, one of the foremost of Nigeria's first generation writers that include the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and famous novelist Chinua Achebe. Indeed, they're often seen as a troika, with Clark sitting at the apex of poetry, Soyinka at that of drama and Achebe prose. In many ways this book is about the relationships that developed among the three, starting from their days in the 1950s at the University College, Ibadan. It's also a critical analysis of the quantum of work Clark produced over time against their social and political circumstances. Adewale Maja-Pearce dwells on the Nigerian Civil War and the impact it had on the lives and work of the writers as Clark backed the federal forces, Soyinka went to prison for dissent while Achebe joined the secessionist Biafra.

A prominent British-Nigerian writer’s odyssey through a West Africa now starkly different from that of his youth. West Africa is at a crossroads. Boasting tremendous natural wealth, its inhabitants are among the world’s poorest. Despite ostensible multi-party democracy, it has suffered coups, conflict and corruption since independence. Where can it go from here? Journeying along the coast and across the Sahel, from Ghana to Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone to Senegal, British-Nigerian writer Adéwálé Májà-Pearce uncovers a restless region on the verge of great change. Visiting fourteen countries—and seeking out the Nigerian diaspora communities in each—he reflects on the dramatic transformations that have shaken these societies since the late 1980s, when he first travelled their roads. From refusing IMF loans to rejecting Western-imposed currencies, West Africa’s diverse, expanding and overwhelmingly young population is conducting a quiet revolution, discarding its European-dominated past and seizing control of its own future. In Nigeria, anti–police brutality demonstrations have challenged an aging elite sustained by colonial enablers who never truly left. And in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, popular resentment has forced the withdrawal of long-present French troops Speaking with local journalists and dissident academics, street hawkers and immigration officers, Májà-Pearce brings to life the compelling story of a region at breaking point—as told by West Africans themselves.

In this groundbreaking work, the essayist and critic Adewale Maja-Pearce delivers a mordant verdict on Nigeria's crisis of democracy. A mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, the most populous country in Africa was fabricated by British colonizers at the turn of the twentieth century. In the years since its independence in 1960, Nigeria spent an unbroken quarter century as a military dictatorship. Yet the blessings of today's democracy are unclear to many, especially among the more than half of the population living in extreme poverty. Buffeted by unemployment, saddled with debt, menaced by bandits and Islamic fundamentalists, Nigeria faces the threat of disintegration. Maja-Pearce shows that recent mobilizations against police brutality, sexism, and homophobia reveal a powerful undercurrent of discontent, especially among the country's youth. If Nigeria has a future, he shows here, it is in the hands of young people unwilling to go on as before.

This print edition is a 48-page broadsheet, packaged together with the 72-page Chronic Books supplement. Writers in the broadsheet include Jon Soske, Paula Akugizibwe, Yves Mintoogue, Adewale Maja-Pearce, Parsalelo Kantai, Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, Cedric Vincent, Deji Toye, Derin Ajao, Tony Mochama, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah,Agri Ismaïl, Lindokuhle Nkosi, Bongani Kona, Stacy Hardy, Emmanuel Induma, Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, Lolade Ayewudi, Simon Kuper and many others. The Chronic Books supplement is a self help guide on reading and writing, with contributions by Dave Mckenzie, Akin Adekosan, Fiston Nasser Mwanza, Yemisi Ogbe, Vivek Nyarangan, Peter Enahoro, Tolu Ogunlesi, Elnathan John,Rustum Kozain, Olufemi Terry, Aryan Kaganof, Rustum Kozain, Harmony Holiday, Sean O? Toole, Gwen Ansell,Binyavanga Wainaina and more.

Ken Saro-Wiwa aroused powerful emotions in his life, and his death by hanging on the orders of General Sani Abacha shook the world. The sainthood of Saro-Wiwa has been promoted in much of the media, but some polemical voices assert that he was more sinner than saint. In the title essay of Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays, Adewale Maja-Pearce strikingly delves beyond the myths into the man in full, warts and all, portraying an ambitious protagonist who initially cultivated powerful friends in the military, in government and business but ended up tragically through judicial murder engendered by the fratricidal crossfire of the Ogoni struggle. Like its subject, controversy dogged every step of this book, and the publishing was nearly stopped as people took positions without reading a word of it. Now that the book is finally out the public is gifted with the pristine opportunity of dipping into the immense world of Maja-Pearce as he, in twenty-three heartfelt essays and reviews, illuminates the benighted mores of modern Nigeria, the identity question in South Africa, the evil politics from cape to coast of Africa, and the seminal minds across the world. This book is a treasure, a profound testament.- Uzor Maxim Uzoatu