Synopses & Reviews
This varied collection of essays explores the vast, complex and contentious subject of language in West Africa. The essayists adopt the perspective that languages - indigenous African and European - and the attitudes of their speakers are inseparable from social and historical identities and wider debates about political cultures. A major aspect of the work covers the attitudes of Nigerians of differing linguistic identities and social profiles to foreign languages vis-a-vis indigenous languages. Other contributors examine the conflicts resulting from the situation of a multiplicity of languages - e.g. Igbo as internal conflict, against English as external conflict; language attitude in market transaction; and attitudes towards pidgin. One essay branches out into philosophies of cultural relativism, human communication and intercultural relations, presenting a critique of Anta Diop and Kwasi Wiredu. A final piece considers the utilisation of information for development in Nigeria, and cultural shock.
Synopsis
Land Without Thunder is Grace Ogot's first collection of short stories. Her live feeling for the macabre and the fatalistic is reminiscent of the tragedy in her first full-length work, The Promised Land (1966). The stories in the collection are vividly told in a captivating and fast moving narrative.