Customer Reviews

Life Turns Man Up and Down: High Life, Useful Advice, and Mad English

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Editor Thometz has identified a superb subject for a literary anthology: long out-of-print examples of "Onitsha Market Literature," named after the large city in Eastern Nigeria where many titles were produced and sold. Their grammar and syntax might not meet conventional American or British writing standards, but the diverse styles of the authors faithfully reflect Nigerian English. This book reprints several complete novellas, along with excerpts from a number of longer works. The content of these items varies quite a bit, and some works are primarily entertainment. But many also reflect one of their main sources of inspiration---Christian literature disseminated throughout Africa during the colonial era. For many African readers (and writers), this was their first exposure to published literature, and helps explain the heavily didactic, even moralizing tone found throughout many of these texts. Onitsha literature is rarely produced nowadays, but these otherwise hard-to-find examples give unparalleled insight into the interests and concerns of both authors and audiences in late colonial Nigeria. They are also just plain fun, though the idioms will be unfamiliar to American readers. An excellent resource for courses on African literature and popular culture, and African Studies generally, this work cries out for an affordable paperback edition. An added bonus is the direct reproduction of texts and illustrations as they originally appeared and circulated, flaws, smudges and all. This conveys the raw feel of the genre much more effectively than if they had been reset in bland, sanitized new type.

The historical importance of this book is rivaled only by the colorful stories written by those whose history it influences. While at times difficult to understand, that is the whole point behind this genre; the uneducated barely literate who share their stories from an age when the world was undergoing change. Recommend it to anyone wanting to expand their horizons.