A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary [Mass Market Paperback]

Ken Saro-Wiwa (Author), William Boyd (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1996

This is the extraordinary and moving account of Ken Saro-Wiwa's period of detention in 1993, and is also a personal history of the man who gave voice to the campaign for basic human and political rights for the Ogoni people. It was fear of his success that made Saro-Wiwa the target of the despotic Nigerian military regime. Arrested on 21 June 1993, ostensibly for his part in election-day disturbances, he describes in harrowing detail the conditions under which he was held. He writes of his involvement with the Ogoni cause and his instrumental role in the setting up of the movement for the survival of the Ogoni people.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140259147
• ISBN-13: 978-0140259148
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #580,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > History > Africa > Nigeria
  • #100 in Books > History > Africa > West Africa

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Respledent Classic against imperial and local oppressors, August 26, 2000

By 

A. A Agbali "Attah" (Missouri, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a classic text that chronicles the degrading and dehumanizing process of intimidation of by a dictatorial regime embedded in repressive antics and deviously blood-thirsty. This book comes from the lived experience of Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigeria's foremost environmentalist and literary writer. He, it was who led his Ogoni people to challenge the environmental degradation of their environment by the Anglo-Dutch Shell corporation through gas flaring, oil spillage and soil degeneration, and the exploiting gimmicks of a militarized centralist and thievery regime. In this work Saro-Wiwa, chronicles his role,in the evolution of the history of the struggles for relevance and records the methods of organization and mobilization of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP)into a vibrant, virulently vocal and highly feared movement. This work derived from the author's contact with the evil of human authority, hence it is a direct a product of his experiences with the malevolent human-evil-forces that were unlynched against him and the struggle. The expereinces reminisced here is just one of his many in the series of unwarranted detentions in the hand of the evil regimes of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha in unkempt cells of the Nigerian security apparatus in different cities of Nigeria. On another occassion- the detention from which he smuggled this book out to be printed- he would not come out alive. He would be "judicially murdered" by the junta whose guns were brought by the sweat of humble and victimized tax-payers like Ken- representative of repressed Nigerians- and from the money derived from oil that springs from underneath his Niger-Delta homeland-including his Ogoni group. Ken did not leave out the Nigerian Police and their inhumanity- dogs who devour the flesh of other dogs- in fact they act like "vulture." A loaded term in Ogoni parlance! This work goes to show the plight of minorities within such colonial contraptions as the Nigerian nation state, under the dominating rule of a northern hegemony and a limited military clique in collaboration with their favor and fund-questing (fat-bellied) civilian cronies. This goes to further prove the fact that colonialism subjugated many ethnic groups under a contraption that was never dialogued nor radically sanctioned.Is it any surprise that Somali, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, Sierra Leone have gone on ruptured by the thunders of machine guns! In this vein the book brings to the fore the problem of such political hypocrisy as such as the overtly caricatured Federalism which is practiced by the Nigerian government. In a way Ken Saro-Wiwa, credenced the fact that all ethnic nationalities must radically be allowed to shape their destiny and control their resources. Further, this book reveals the filthy environmental practices of the multinationals who without regards to safety measures and ecological ethics endanger the lives of people in the orgy for profit-making. Profit-making predominates in the psyche of the multinations in deterrence for the sanctity of the human life! Double business and ethical standards-one for Africa another for the West- in fact Ken calls this "environmental racism." This book is a resplendent classic, and it is essentially valuable for all those who want to educate themselves on one of the most forceful and feared Social, ethnic and environmental movements that has arisen in post-colonial Africa today. In fact, the book goes to show the courageous fights of minorities and social movements towards advocating and ensuring changes. Ken Saro-Wiwa its author was crudely exterminated with eight others on a farce of a trial- a militarized set-up tribunal of the despised tyrannt of Sani Abacha in 1995. Saro-Wiwa is dead but remains a living-dead, an ancestor of a sort for the many social movements that revolves around emphasizing rural development and sound environmental norms and sanctity for the community where companies are located that are emerging in Nigeria today, and it would not be an overstatement to add Africa. His ideas and views radiates and takes on flesh in this little book. Buy one today, read and digest it and realize what a portent book it is, and know why the author was most few by a modern day dictator, who feared men and women of ideas than he feared the men and women who hold the guns! Happy reading! Bon voyage!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Read, October 7, 2005

By 

Pelumi Olatinpo - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Month and a Day: a Detention Diary Pb (Paperback)

The more I read this book, the more I understood how important it was for the erstwhile military junta of the time to eliminate Dr. Kenure SAro-Wiwa. This book is a blinding shot in the eye for anyone who was in one way or the other called out for acts the author painstakingly makes the reader to personify. It delves into all manners of "human's inhuman to human," if I dare call it so. Read this, especially if you wish to know the state of the current Africa, using Nigeria as a backdrop, in relation to the rest of the world.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When a master speaks, one can't help but listen, June 16, 2009

By 

Aniekan (Syracuse, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary (Mass Market Paperback)

Ken wrote this book in such an engaging fashion that I have to confess that amidst the horrors described in it, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Be it his sarcastic wit, his detailed descriptions of people and surroundings, or purely his mastery of the craft of story-telling, his blend being a marriage of west African storytelling and a mastery of the English language. I was a young student in Southeastern Nigeria when Ken was murdered. All I knew about him at the time was that he was the author and producer of a show I greatly enjoyed, "Basi & Co" in my preteens, and that he was advocating for the rights of the Ogoni. I was greatly educated by the book both about Ken's extensive history of public service in Nigeria (although he doesn't fit the typical construct) and more importantly about how Nigeria might move forward out of it's current pitiful condition. Thank you sir and may our generation see the realities you died for.