LITERATORS' CORNER

                                                                                                            - - Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy An ill child left in a shrine to be healed by the shrine god (while the father goes in search of herbs) is found by a White Christian priest who believes the child was kept there as a sacrifice to the idol, especially as it was left there unattended. The priest supposedly rescues this child and takes him to Rome where he grows up to become a priest. The young priest hears extraterrestrial voices ordering him to seek out his roots and interprets this as God asking him to return and show the 'light' to his father and people. Me...

     A Short Story by Mohamed Mohamoud Ahmed Once upon a time, there was a boy whose name was Ghuled. He was living with his parents. His parents were very interested in empowering their boy educationally to become the first among others. Ghuled was a student who refused the advice of his parents. He started to follow bad students that he should not even be engaged with and they became close friends. ‘Wasting time is not good,’ his father advised him. ‘But Ahmed replied that time was not important. Despite this, Ghuled's parents promised to send him outside the country for his university education after he must have finished his secondary education. Unfortunately, he did not accept the idea of his parents and turned a deaf ear to their words. He started to smoke cigarettes and chew khat all day till he exhausted his time without anything being achieved. And this was how Ghuled burned his days which became months and then years without any achievement. Many y...

--Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy It has been a while since I have chomped on a novel and felt this satiated. It is perhaps even more surprising that it is a novel in series; and I must confess that I detest waiting or looking for the next series of a story or film to know how a story finally ends (I'm for giv' me da 'hole mother fricking thin' or giv' me nothin' at all--pay no attention to my poor attempt at imitating the teenage characters in this novel, haha!). However, here is one story I need to know how it ends like my life depends on it! Two adventurous male teenagers decide to ransack a strange looking solitary house in the desert of Las Vegas and luckily find two gemstones following an attack by a ferocious dog. It turns out that these stones are not just ordinary stones and imbue their handlers with extraterrestrial powers like an ability to control plants and animals, breathe inside water, feel extreme strength and bolster self-confidence. But there is a h...

                                      -- Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy Two major functions of the family as the basic unit of society are socialising and integrating its members into the larger society. Where it fails to do so, its members are forced to seek love, attention, and care elsewhere. Faced by the physical absence of parents or the lack of parental attention and care in their homes, many young Americans turn to the streets to adopt new families and friends that they pledge absolute allegiance to. Hence, many young children are easily drawn into the world of juvenile delinquency with peer pressure as an incentive for their violent and antisocial acts. The adult world is such a distant place from the world of adolescents cum teenagers, yet adults are quick to assume that they know all about youngsters (we fool ourselves with the 'been there, done that, and seen it all' mentality). We fail...

             --Nkosiyazi Kan Kanjiri When the war ends, Nomzamo Dube’s protagonist becomes a fugitive and begins a war of destiny. A simultaneous war that involves running away from the freedom he fought for on one hand, and facing his unresolved past on the other. He is still that man born out of wedlock, now on a quest to know his father. But there is another thing, he makes a girl pregnant and denies responsibility.  A lot happens in a country learning how to be free. Equally, a lot happens to a boy turned into a man by war, for he now must learn to be a father by himself. These are the circumstances that shape the protagonist’s character in Nomzamo Dube's debut novel, Milk, Bile and Honey.  The issues explored are gripping, but how the story begins is even more compelling, "How could a mother carry a child for 9 months and not in the process think about a list of names to pick from?" Anyone who has ever attempted to write a book will conf...

Helon Habila's Measuring Time : Africa's History as Narrative                --Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy A set of twin brothers; in a bid to avenge years of neglect by their father; choose to seek fame. The older but frail and sickly one (Mamo) chooses the pen while the younger agile and defiant one (Lamamo) chooses the gun. Through their experiences and that of those they come in contact with, we see the history of Africa unfold before our very eyes. This is how I wish to remember the beautiful and scintillating tragic story told by Helon Habila in Measuring Time . But there is more... Albeit Mamo's underlying health condition denies him the opportunity of seeking a career in the army, he becomes an history teacher and was later employed as the village's palace secretary and historian with a commission to craft the history of the village ruler (the Mai) and that of his ancestors. But he soon finds out he is but a puppet in the hands of scheming...

Finding Odysseus's Palace: Jane Cochrane's Odysseus' Island                 --Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy Once upon a time, a young student of literature sat in class listening to his formalist professor trying to blur the line between literature and human existence or reality. The professor said that whatever you have in a narrative has no connection with the outer world of that book. But this young student had trained himself to see art as 'a mirror of society' and the idea that it should be considered an entity on its own outside the society, author, or epoch that fashioned that art failed to sit well with him. That was probably his first contact with a pure formalist and he felt he just had to say something. This young student got up and told the professor that he could not be right. Understanding literature often demands understanding the circumstances surrounding such literature and that literature is as much life as life is literature. He re...