The story: I won’t dwell too much on trying to explain the story to you my fellow readers for two reasons. One, I hope that you have already read this wonderful book and two, it is far too difficult to summarise a story as thought-provoking and multi-faceted as this one in a few paragraphs. It is far too all-encompassing. In a nutshell, it follows four main characters, His Excellency, Sam, who rules the fictional country of Kangan (an allegory for Nigeria I believe). Chris Oriko, the Commisioner of Information, Beatrice Okoh, Secretary of Finance and Chris’s girlfriend and Ikem Osodi, editor of the National Gazette newspaper. Elewa, another noteworthy character is Ikem’s pidgin English-speaking, fiery girlfriend. Chris, Ikem and Sam were former classmates.
Sam has Ikem “fatally wounded”, these words specifically used to misdirect the masses, when Ikem is arrested in his home for supposedly engaging in a coup. Prior to this, Chris and Ikem seemed to be on the path to reviving their strained friendship though a communal fear and dislike for Sam. After learning of Ikem’s “fatal wound”, Chris goes into hiding and the faeces hits the fan.
Some of the mastery of Anthills Of The Savannah so powerful is the way in which Achebe oscillates between first person narratives of Ikem (a few hard-hitting poems thrown in here and there), Chris and Beatrice and switches to third person for the denouement. In this way, we are aware of the maelstrom into which the characters have been thrown but we still aren’t ready for the volcanic eruption that is the state of affairs in Kangan.
Rewa’s take on things: In keeping with Things Fall Apart and No Longer At Ease, Achebe runs the aftermath of colonialism and ever prevailing political corruption. Of the three novel, Anthills Of The Savannah, although very powerful and masterfully written, has been my least favourite. I don’t know why. Achebe’s prose is as intelligent, succinct and commendable as ever but I found it so difficult to engage with the story or the characters. This could have something to do with the fact that I was down with a cold and trying to liberate my nasal passages and concentrate at the same time!
Chris I found to be sanctimonious, Ikem who seemed to suffer from chronic weltschmerz, His Excellency a general weakling who sought to make scape-goats out of those that he deemed a threat to his illusionary authority. As for Beatrice, I couldn’t identify with her as a woman, Desdemona complex and all. Elewa was probably my favourite, I loved reading her pidgin English. I found her brave, amenable and unpretentious.
From the beginning, Achebe sets the tone for what the novel will be about. He reflects on the state of affairs in Kangan through Chris’s words, “…looking back on the last two years it should be possible to point to a decisive event and say: it was at such and such a point that everything went wrong and the rules were suspended. But I have not found such a moment or such a cause…”. The rest of the novel sets about on a journey which shows the reader that there is no one cause for the plight of Kangan but rather, as the old axiom goes, one things leads to another. We see that a confluence of interwoven and seemingly inconsequential events trigger off a ticking time bomb. Ikem uses the magazine as a vehicle through which his own voice and opinion can be heard but he is ousted, set up and silenced. Chris’s demise soon follows suit whilst he is on the run, although his own death was avoidable.
What is interesting about the progression of the novel is that as the men fall, the women emerge and commandeer the ruins the men have left behind. Elewa gives birth to the late Ikem’s baby girl. Elewa’s elderly uncle is late to the naming ceremony and so against the grain of deeply entrenched customary traditions, the women name the child and a typically male name at that. I read two things into this. Firstly, that the elders were late and unable to perform their duty suggested to me that Achebe was alluding to the fact that in order for change to become manifest, fresh blood, untainted by fossil ideologies and corruption. The second thing was the position of women in society, this was touched upon in the novel in a dialogue between Ikem and Beatrice.
Achebe wants you to see that Nigerians, Africans in general, accepted the subjugation from the colonialists all too readily, that they did not put up a fight. And now, they still allow this to continue, under dictators and such parodists. They are complicit in their own shame. Anthills Of The Savannah tells you that African society needs to be integrated, with women as important as men, and equality amongst all classes.
Irrespective of my feelings towards the characters, I am in awe of Achebe. I found myself highlighting so many paragraphs in my kindle to return to just so I could re-capture the sheer brilliance of his writing. I would read some passages and think to myself, how does one sit and write such? He is one gifted man and anyone who studies English literature needs to read every single one of this man’s novels. Unlike the much hailed Salman Rushdie, Achebe makes no pretences (some people will probably want to lynch me for berating Rushdie but hey, my opinion). His writing is simple, adroit and so elegant. That Booker Prize was well deserved indeed.
Read & Reviewed 