LITERATORS' CORNER

If there were one review I would rather not write, it would be this one. I remember that I once found it amusing hearing a professor of mine lamenting his inability to complete Buchi Emecheta's Joys of Motherhood due to the outburst of emotions welled up by the events in the story. Well, it appears nemesis has come for me in form of Nuruddin Farah's Maps ; the fictional novel is such a powerful and grief-stricken one that leaves one feeling sad every time it is recalled. More than anything, it demonstrates the power of words on paper by showing how a writer can manipulate our emotions through words and force us to empathise with their characters. If this were all there was to the novel, it would still be a powerful one, but there is more. Nuruddin Farah's Maps tells the tale of Misra, an Ethiopian-Amhara divorcee, who comes to live among the Somalis before the Ethio-Somali war of 1977-78. Misra had been abducted as a young girl by a Somali warrior following a tribal raid ...

Shoneyin's The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives is humorous tale which revolves around a paterfamilias; Baba Segi; and his four wives—Iya Segi, Iya Femi, Iya Tope, and Bolanle. It so happens that while illiterate Baba Segi goes around bragging about his conquests as an accomplished polygamist (his fourth and latest being a university graduate to boot) and how he dominates his household, it is revealed that our proud man is just a soldier without ammunition, or a paper tiger. Worried about his fourth wife's infertility, Baba Segi comes to discover that he is actually the one afflicted with sterility and that his purported children from his first three wives were actually fathered by other men. We also come to see that his idea of control over his household is a figment of his imagination as his home is actually run by his first wife, Iya Segi. The story is told using the voice of the characters alongside that of the narrator. By allowing the characters tell their own sides...