three west african novelists

Three West African NovelistsAuthor(s): Martin TuckerSource: Africa Today, Vol. 12, No. 9 (Nov., 1965), pp. 10-14Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4184672 .

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African Novel/five

three west cfrican novelists Martin Tucker

CHINUA ACHEBE, Cypriani Ekwensi, Oniuora Nzekwu, o Wole Soyinka, Thomas M. Aluko, and William

Conton comprise a new development in the West Afri- can literary scene: all Africans, they have been pub- lishing novels in English since 1954. With the exception of William Conton, a Ghanaian, these writers are Nigerian, and their novels are rooted either in the Christian-Juju complex or in the political ferment attending national independence. While all the Nige- rian novelists read and criticize each other's work, and know each other personally, it is inaccurate to call their work a conscious literary movement. They are writers functioning in a mobile society who have no formal set of piinciples such as those of Aim6 Cesaire, Leopold Senghor, and other Negritude writers; yet they have standards that are exemplified by their work. Nor do they speak through a journal like Pris- ence Africaine, a periodical actively involved in the propagation of French West African culture, although, again, they are to be found in such journals as Black Orpheus, Nigeria Magazine, and Ibadan. In priniciple, these novelists-and poets and dramatists and story- tellers-are reluctant to talk about "the African soul," a favorite phrase of the Negritude writers, and once a popular idea throughout intellectual Africa, although they are willing to talk about particular African problems and the techniques and themes of African literature.

Such is the activity and ferment in this literature, which is little older than a generation, that trends noticeable, even marked, five years ago are now for- gotten. Amos Tutuola, for example, who spawned the first wave of excitement when his work crossed the ocean to England, France, arid America, is rarely read today in Nigeria.

In general these West African novelists have treated four areas of content. One is the primitive and/or tribal African society, the culture untouched by Euro- pean contact. Novels of this kind tend not so much to glorify, as to show respect for, an ordered way of life that has passed. The admiration is not "nativization" or a romanticization of a dead past, but a cultural nationalism--a literary salute to Africa's achievement before Europe.

Another area of content is the "putre" Africa forced into contact with European customs. Many of the writers who deal with Africa's past bring up that past

to the point of contact with Europe. The defeat of African culture, particularly the tribal way of life, become the central issue in these novels.

A third area of content is the defeat of Africa not by Europe but by a Europeanized Africa. Novels of this kind accept the passing of the European as a de facto condition. They raise no lament for the displaced European, but they cry out in protest against the leg- acy of Europe-the corruption, the bureaucratic sloth, the greed; the lack of strong family ties and sense of purpose. These novels are essentially warnings against decadence.

The final type is an extension of the others. The writers in this group see the dangers inherent in the new Africa, but they also admit the ineradicable pres- ence of Europeanization in Africa. The African, in the eyes of these writers and probably of their read- ers, will lead the way in the new world be'cause he will combine the technological knowledge of Europe (which no longer can be denied to,him) and the spirit of human kindness and love, a spirit that has been killed off in Europe but not in Africa. Thus the Afri- can makes the machine work for him in contradis- tinction to the European, who is working for the machine. The African has it in his power to bring peace to the world because of his inner triumphs.

0 The origins of the African novel spring from folk

tales, anthropological accounts, missionaries' observa- tions, traders' reports, and explorers' journals. Just as it is difficult to place a firm line between creative nonfiction by Europeans and European novels about Africa (for example, J. F. Stuart-Young's narratives and Laurens van der Post's travel writings), it is equally difficult to determine the first modern novel in English by an African. Many memoirs, utilizing fic- tional and narrative techniques, display a literary skill as accomplished as in the novel, and these memoirs appeared sporadically even before the 20th century.

In West Africa one of the earliest such accounts was "Lobagola: An African Savage's Own Story," by

MARTIN TUCKER, in the English Department of Long Island University, has published four previous articles on the African novel in AFRICA TODAY. The completed series will appear in book form next year.

10 AFRICA TODAY



Bata Kindai Amgoza Ibn Lo Bagola (New York, 1930). to Bagola's theme is stated in one of his key sentences: "There is no excuse for a white man to be less civilized, in the proper sense of the word, than we savages." His book is especially significant in West African literary history because it foretells the major theme of West African novels: Lo Bagola is not an African in a village with traditional customs, but a man in contact with a vastly different civilization. He must learn to adjust to the changing conditions, and in the process of that adjustment he comes close to neurosis. Lo Bagola grew up in a remote village near the Niger Bend, and was miserable when he returned there after an education in a white man's school. He later went to New York, where he lectured, travelled, and wrote articles on Africa. In his own words he learned to "lie like a white man," but even this faculty did not bring him happiness. He yearned for the imaginary happy past of his village and the vision- ary fulfillment cf modern power, but was able to achieve neither. He closed his book with the conflict in abeyance and in irresolution.

This conflict between tribal beliefs and modern technology, between faith in the past and rati6nal op- timism in the opportunities of the future, is found in all of the four books by Amos Tutuola, the first Ni- gerian novelist to be celebrated abroad. It is one of the ironies of literature that though Nigerians think little of him, he is probably the best-known West African fiction writer in Europe and the United States (with the possible exception today of Chinua Achebe). His work has sold well on both continents, and he has been the literary sensation of Paris in his original work and in translation. The reason for his French success may be laid to his style: it is an amalgam of African rhythms and structure with pidgin English locutions. But just as Nigerians gen- erally frown on the Negritude movement, so they look on Tutuola's work as an artificial product and dead end.

Tutuola is more a mythologist than a novelist. All his work is cast in the guise of fiction, but his heroes and heroines are dream-figures rather than people. "The Palm-Wine Drinkard" (London, 1952) tells the story of a man who journeys through several night- mare adventures in the African bush after his palm- wine tapster has died. The hero, who has drunk 225 kegs of palm-wine a day since he was ten years old, cannot find anyone capable of replacing his dead tapster (who fell from a tree while tapping wine for him). Consequently he travels to Deads Town to re- trieve his tapster. On the way he meets a female cream image; a quarter-of-a-mile-long total stranger, with no head, feet, or hands, but with one large eye sitting Cyclops-like at the top of his body; and cold, hairy animals that sound like church bells.

The same elements of mythology are found in Tutu- ola's second book, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" (London, 1954). Here a boy in a polygamous household braves the terrors of the Bush of Ghosts in order

to discover the meaning of "good" and "bad." The boy travels through Lost or Gain Valley, which has to be crossed without clothes; he meets "burgler-Ghosts"- children who, having died in infancy, come back to the mortal world to torment their parents; he sees a group of witches getting ready to eat a member of their family.

"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" is not a sequel to "The Palm-Wine Drinkard," for although the imagery springs from the same source, a wonderful grab-bag of Jungian, Freudian, totem, taboo, and industrial conceptions, the worlds in the two books are different. The first novel deals with Deads Town; the second with the spirits of the world. These spirits have never died because they have never been alive. They are ageless and everywhere. Yet the tone is very much the same: fear exists in both books, the fear of the journey and the attraction to it; the thrill of fear in the forest; the almost pleasurable fear of the lost boy threatened by the Golden-ghost, the Silverish-ghost, the Copperish-ghost, the Smelling-ghost, and the Homeless-ghost. And although the boy returns to earth, the fear and the ambivalence still remain, for he dreams hopefully of being able to attend the cen- tenary of the Secret Society of Ghosts.

Tutuola's third book, "Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle" (London, 1955), continues the journey motif. Simbi wants to learn "Poverty" and "Punish- ment." She leaves her wealthy mother and secure

Amos Tutuola about two o'clock in the night, there we saw a

creature, either he was a spirit or other harmful creature, we could not say, he was coming towards us, he was white as if painted with white paint, he was white from foot to the topmost of his body, but he had no head or feet and hands like human-beings and he got one large eye on his topmost. He was long about 1/4 of a mile and his diameter was about six feet, he re- sembled a white pillar. At the same time that I saw him coming towards us, I thought what I could do to stop him, then I remembered a charm which was given me by my father before he died.

"The use of the charm was this: If I meet a spirit or other harmful creature at night and I used it, it would turn me into a great fire and smoke, so that the harmful creatures would be unable to reach the fire. Then I used the charm and it burnt the white creatUre, but before he could burn into ashes there we saw about ninety of the same kind as this long white creature, all of them were coming to us (fire) and when they reached the fire (us) the whole of them surrounded it and bent or curved towards the fire; after that the whole of them were crying: "Cold! cold! cold" etc., but as they surrounded the fire, they did not want to leave there, although they could not do anything to that fire (us). They were only warming themselves from the fire and they were exceedingly satisfied with the fire and to stay with it as long as it could remain there for them. Of course I thought that as we had turned into the fire, we would be safe, but not at all."

The Palm-Wine Drinkard (London, Faber and Faber, 1952, p. 42)

NOVEMBER 1965 11



household to enter the cryptic road that leads to knowledge, danger, and fearful mysteries. One of Simbi's journeys includes a ride in a sealed coffin on a river for several days, at the end of which the coffin slides into a fishing town, and Simbi is unsealed, whole and alive. This adventure is as fantastic and convincing, in its setting, as lHermione's voyage in "'The Winter's Tale." Simbi, unlike the heroes of Tutuola's first two books, soon achieves her quest: after her kidnapping by Dogo she is sold into slavery and learns enough of "Poverty" and "Punishment" to change her mind about adventuring outside the limits of her town.

In "The Brave African Huntress" (London, 1958), Tutuola's fourth book, the four sons of an old man die in the Jungle of Pygmies. The remaining child, a daughter, decides to avenge their death by scourging the land of these Pygmies. She is the Brave African Huntress, and carries with her a magic "cudgel." When her leg is cut off by a giant, one of the "obsta- cles" of the jungle, she joins the two parts together and experiences no further pain. Thereafter she slays the "obstacle." But her quest leads her into captivity by the Pygmies. Marked with an "V," she is placed in Bachelors' Town, where all men want her "to wife." Significantly, she chooses a very old man. Then she goes on to kill all the Pygmies and free their prisoners (those hunters who had journeyed before her to rid the land of the evil spirits). The image of a woman leading her country to glory and happiness, thus sustain- ing the matriarchal African society, is here explicitly verbalized.

The journey motif, or the end to innocence, seems to be at the core of all of Tutuola's work. What ap- pears especially important is the change of the heroes' attitude to their journey. In the first two books they return to earth, but they yearn for the mysterious forces of Deads Town and the spirits' world, and in anticipa- tion of their return to these worlds they revel in the eternal fears of the Forest. In the other two books the heroines are content to have returned home. Home is dull, it lacks the throbbing passion of the Forest, but it is secure. Indeedfi the theme of Tutuola's third book is Simbi's foolish desire to venture into "Poverty" and "Punishment." The Brave African Huntress is driven at least as strongly by a positive social goal-destruc- tion of the ugly Pygmies-as by a psychological one. Tutuola seems to have progressed from a need to ex- plore evil and darkness, a need compounded by fear of punishment for possessing that compulsion, to a more rational social approach to the conquest and elimination of evil. Even the styles of the books reflect the change of attitude. The bouncing, tossing sentences of "The Palm-Wine Drinkard" nearly dis- appear from "The Brave African Huntress," which uses a stately, almost conventional sentence structure.

Tutuola has had little influence on Nigerian ;riters, principally because he has relied on a personal mythology, and because many Nigerians feel he has been playing the court jester to the European literary king-

makers. Yet it is likely that In time he will be seen as a real talent, not merely a phenomenon who intro- duced the exotic barbarities of an African jungle to a livingroom reading world. Even now he is not without- influence: his easeful, vital, rhythmic style brought the first wave of European and American attention to West African writers. His preference for English over his native Yoruba has' been in itself significant, and his books, in spite of their mythical primacy, reflect the ambivalence of an Africa rooted in the tribal past and in the modern power struggle.

Cyprian Ekwensi is the earliest and most prolific of the socially realistic Nigerian novelists. His first writings were mythological fragments and folk tales. From these African materials he turned to the city and contemporary problems. Lately he seems to have gone back to the source of his earlier material, the tribal milieu of Africa. In 1950 he published "The Leopard's Claw," a seminal work in which appear the themes that are to occupy him for his first three full- length novels. This novella tells of a 17-year-old East- ern Nigerian college student, Rikku, whose soul is caught in a war between the old and the new spirit of Nigeria. Before that war is ended, Rikku must leave college and taste of the primitive, witch-doctor world that calls so ardently to one side of him. Rikku goes to work in the forest, where he meets repre- sentatives of the Leopard Men, a fetish cult. He is put through a series of initiations by them, part of which consists of being smeared with the blood of a leopard and left alone in the middle of the forest to find his way back to a campsite. Like a leopard crawl- ing stealthily in the night, the initiate must not be seen by any man, or else he dies. The fear that is a part of African life pervades Ekwensi's tale, and Rikku, who scorned the safe world of college, is now confronted with the fearful blackness.

Yet Ekwensi's book is not a glorification of this animalistic fetish world; it is a transformation of it. Rikku accepts the leopard's claw as a sign of having passed his initiation, but he is no longer infatuated with the teachings of its cult. He disobeys its chief leader by taking Burutu, whom the Leopard Men want to kill, to safety. "I'm no longer afraid of Ole Man Forest, or anybody. I feel free. It's like being born again and I want to go back into the world."

"The Leopard's Claw" deals with the fusion of primitivism and modern civilization, but within two years this was a historical problem rather than a contemporary issue for Ekwensi. The more difficult task that he will now illuminate in fiction lies in the battlefield between personal needs and public duties. In his fiction Ekwensi is far from being a tract writer urging total dedication to social and political tasks, but he presents the conflict between personal desire and group duty as the major problem of his country.

Ekwensi's first full-length novel, "'People of the City," is an attack on the city, but only in so far as the city is a repository of vice. Personal decadence,

12 AFRICA TODAY



rot urban life,. is his theme. But personal decadenc%,. because of the realities of the New Africa, takes place in the city. The city cannot be avoided if the New Africa is to emerge. Lagos is thus a hell that must be got through. Such a view leads Ekwensi into Christian imagery. The use of Beatrice as the name for the two leading female characters-one a tempta- tion, the other an angel-is a symbolic device. Beatrice the First is an ironic exploitation of Dante's lady, but Beatrice the Second radiates light and love literally. Lagos,, the dead city, is, a hell of several spheres; the novel is prefaced by the West African proverb, "Wrong-doing is a hell; everyone mounts his own and descries that of another."

Cyprian Ekwensi "Someone told her once that if she ever left Lagos for one week, no one would remember her. But Jagua soon discovered that leaving Lagos as she had done for more than three months meant-in addition-not recognizing the city on her return, it was changing so fast. The lorry park had been cemented and paved and they had now built a proper entrance and exit but the lorries and the touts and small quick-quick buses were still there. If anything they were flourishing more vigorously. . "A taxi took her back to her lodgings. She was glad

she stilt retained her rooms. Try as she would Lagos still remained her natural habitat. The memory of Chief Ofubura and Krinameh still lingered, but the pressure to go back was already becoming less urgent. This time was perhaps the best hour to come back unnoticed: sunset fading into a short twilight that dazzled the eyes and confused the senses. People were mere forms, hazy and ghostly but identifiable. No one knew just when Jagua got back to her room. She remained for a moment in the room, smelling its mustiness. At last she had reached home. Qgabu was the home of her father and mother; Bagana was Fred- die Namme's home where Uncle Namme lived as Re- gent; Krinameh was the home of Chief Ofubura who was infatuated with her: Jagua thought of all these places and tried to fit herself into one of them. There was none quite like Lagos and the Tropicana. She open- ened the windows and without putting on the light, she began to unpack, mainly foodstuffs, yams, oranges, plantains. She would not need to spend her money on expensive Lagos food for some time at least. Back home. She breathed in the air of freedom."

Jagua Nana (London, Hutchinson, 1961), pp. 106-7

The hero of "The Leopard's Claw" went through a "hell" in the forest. In "People of the City" the "hell" is the city. In Ekwensi's next novel, "Jagua Nana" (London, 1961) the heroine leaves the dead city to start a fresh life in a less corrupt town. Amnusa Sango's last words in "People of the City" are that he will return to Lagos because he must return. Jagua Nana leaves Lagos in sorrow but not in regret.

Jagua Nana is another version of Beatrice the First, an Eastern Nigerian whose search for the "high life" has led her to Lagos. At 45 she is still attractive and glittering. The name "Jagua," the tribute given her

because of her similarity to the sleek British car, fits her perfectly. Ekwensi's great sympathy for Jagua pervades the novel. Her love of life, her need to give love and receive it, are all drawn with a compassionate hand. Yet Jagua is also the symbol of the city and its destructiveness. It is not surprising that Ekwensi, after this novel of a city that spurned even one of its converts, turned back to the pastoral locale of his earlier work, and in "Burning Grass" (London, 1962) found a peace among the Fulani tribe of Northern Nigeria.

Chinua Achebe is another East Nigerian who sets his novels in Ibo villages and in the big city of Lagos. Like Ekwensi he is critical of the Europeanizing of Africa, and of missionaries who fail to leaven their teachings with an understanding of Africanism. His first novel, "Things Fall Apart" (London, 1958) de- rives its title from Yeats's poem, "Sailing to Byzan- tium," and centers on the anarchy in the imaginary Ibo village of Umuofia after the arival of the white man in the 20th century. The novel, written in three sections, creates an idyllic picture of pre-Christian tribal life. As the book opens, the hero Okonkwo is rich and successful, "well-known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements." Because his father was a failure, Okonkwo is ruled bv one passion-to hate everything his father Unoka had loved. "One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness." A confident, self-made man, Okonkwo takes pride in his country, his religion, and his social and personal life, and creates a devout culture out of his beliefs. Achebe's novel is a record of Okonkwo's downfall as a result of the clash between him and the new, white, Christian order.

"Things Fall Apart" is remarkable for its insights into traditional situations. The elements are familiar: an imaginary village, the coming of the white man and Christianity, the admirable picture of African tribal life, and the inevitable racialism when black and white meet. Although many other writers have portrayed men like Okonkwo, none has revealed the cast of his mind so skillfully. Okonkwo is not idealized but made real. What destroys him is his unyielding pride; he fails to adapt to the new era. The tragedy is that Okonkwo is the best man in the village.

Achebe's second novel, "No Longer at Ease" (Lon- don, 1960), also takes its title from a contemporary British poet. The phrase comes from a line in T. S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi": "We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods." The novel's setting is Lagos, a Lagos much like the corrupt city of Ekwensi's books, and the hero a "been-to" (a Nigerian who has been to England). The novel continues the story of the Okonkwo family, for the "been-to" hero is Okonkwo's grandson, Obi.

The phrase that recurs in "No Longer at Ease" and that can be heard behind all the other music of its

NOVEMBER 1965 13



pages is "Our people have a long way to go." Lagos, in Achebe's book, is a city that also must be cleansed, but Achebe's emphasis is on the failings of Africans, not the machinations of Europeans. Obi is a mnan who has squan(dered his great potential. Ile is on trial, as the book opens, for havilg' accepted a bribe. The novel is a flashback, an illuminating descent, into Obi's spirit.

Chinua Achebe "As soon as the day broke, a large crowd of men from Ezeudu's quarter stormed Okonkwo's compound, dressed in garbs of war. They set fire to his houses, demolished his red walls, killed his animals and destroyed his barn. It was the justice of the earth goddess, and they were merely her messengers. They had no hatred in their hearts against Okonkwo. His great- est friend, Obierika, was among them. They were merely cleansing the land which Okonkwo had polluted with the blood of a clansman.

"Obierika was a man who thought about things. When the will of the goddess had been done, he sat down in his obi and mourned his friend's calamity. Why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently? But although he thought for a long time he found no answer. He was merely led into greater complexities. He remembered his wife's twin children, whom he had thrown away. What crime had they committed? The Earth had de- creed that they were an offense on the land and must be destroyed. And if the clan did not exact punishment for an offense against the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on an offender. As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it soiled the others."

Things Fall Apart (London, Heinemann, 1958), pp. 111-12

Obi's real tragedy is his inability to fit into either an African or a European mold, or to combine the best of the two worlds. Instead Ob)i displays his superiority without purpose and speeds his own defeat. Mcany Nigerians, Achebe says in his compassionate way, share in this defeat-Obi's mother and father for failing to uinderstand their impatient son's desire to achieve all that Western life has to offer; the Umuofia Progressive IJnion for demanding a utilitarian view of activity when Obi's nature cries only for creative expression; the Nigerians who accept corruption as a way of life and expect Obi to conform; and the Syrian merchants who tempt Obi with their wealth of goods.

Achebe's skill is now so recognized that he is required reading in Nigerian schools and part of the syllabus in many comparative literature courses in colleges in Africa, Eur-ope, and the United States. He is even, according to the Times Literary Supplement, required reading for a school certificate in Australia! Achebe's recognition is but one more instance of the ferment and crneativity of Nigerian literature today. Others besides Achebe write with talent-John Pepper Clark, Wole Soyinka, Onuora Nzweku (who will be

discussed in a subsequent article) -but it Is Achebe who has caught, more than any other, the spirit of the present Africa, the conflict between the forest and the city, the native and the Christian religions. Ache- be's vision of Africa is of a people struggling with the whirlwind of their own opposing forces. Even in a peaceful Africa, Achebe shows, struggle is never quiescent.

Some West African Novels avlailable in U.S. Many of the following novels are available in the United States, even when these books have not been published by an American publisher. The University Place Bookstore, 69 University Place, New York 14, New York, is an excel- lent souice of supply for novels by Africans writing in English. The American Society of African Culture (AMSAC), 15 East 40th Street, New York, has an exten- sive library and information service on African novels. Chinua Achebe. "Things Fall Apart." New York, Mc-

Dowell, Obolensky, 1959 (in paperback also). '"No Longer at Ease." New York, Ivan Obolensky, 1961. "Arrow of God." London, Heinemann, 1964.

William Conton. "The African." Boston, Little, Brown, 1960 (in paperback also).

Cyprian Ekwensi. "People of the City." London, Andrew Dakers, 1954 (in paperback also). "Jagua Nana." London, Hutchinson & Company, 1961. "Burning Grass." (African Writers Series). London, Heinemann, 1962.

Onuora Nzekwu. "A Wand of Noble Wood." London, Hutchinson & Company, 1962.

Amos Tutuola. "The Palm-Wine Drinkard." London, Faber and Faber, 1952. '"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts." London, Faber and Faber, 1954.

. "Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle." London, Faber and Faber, 1955.

. "The Brave African Huntress." Lon- don, Faber and Faber, 1958.

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION

(Act of October 23, 1962; Section 4,369, Title 39, United States Code) 1. Date of filing: October 1, 1965). 2. Title of publication: Africa Today. :3. Fr(quency of issue: Monthly except July and August. 4. Location of known office of publicationi: 211 East 43rd Street, New

York, New Yoirk 10017. 5. Location of the headqjuarters or general business offices of the pu,b-

lisher: 211 East 4:lrd Street, New York, New York 10017. 6. Names and addresses of publisher-, editor-, and managing editor:

Puiblisher , Amer ican Committee on Africa, 211 East 43rd Street, New York, New York, 10017; Editor, Collin Gonze, 211 East 43rd Street, New York, New York 10017; Managing editor: none.

7. Owner: Amer ican Committee on Africa, 211 East 43rd Street, New York, New York 10017; stockholders: none.

S. Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holdinig 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other secuiities: none.

10. (A) Total no. copies piinted: average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 4,000; single issue nearest to filing (late, 4,000. (B) Paid ciirculation (1) Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales: average no. copies each issue duiiring preceding 12 months: 75; single copies nearest to filing date: 75; (2) Mail subscriptions: average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 3,502; single issue nearest to filing date: 3,315 (est.). (C) Total pai(d circulation: average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 1,577; single issue nearest to filing date: 3,390. (D) Frce distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means: average no. copies each issue dur ing preceding 12 months: 30; single issue nearest to filing date: 30. (E) Total distribution: average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 3,607; single issue near-est to filing date: 3,420; (F) Office use, left-over, unaccounted, sp)oiled after printing: average no. copies each issue during prece(ling 12 months: 193; single issue nearest to filing date: 580S. ((,) Total: average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 4,000); single issue nearest to filing date: 4,000.

I certify that the statements made by me above are correct aad complete.

COLLIN GONZE, Editor

14 AFRICA TODAY



three west african novelists

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