Fettered Writers, Unfettered Minds: Illustrations From The Prison Memoirs Of Wole Soyinka And Ken Saro-wiwa

The euphoria of independence in Nigeria was followed by bitter disillusionment as different sorts of predicaments became the fate of the population: poverty, famine, corruption, and civil war. In such situations, can the writer remain indifferent? This was not the case of two writers, Wole Soyinka and Ken Saro-Wiwa, whose violent confrontations with the authorities led them to jail, followed respectively by exile and execution. Soyinka’s The Man Died: Prison Notes and Saro-Wiwa’s A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary reflect the status quo of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Nigeria, two different stages of what is commonly known as globalization.