Professor Wole Soyinka was quoted
saying his latest book is the “nastiest” that he has written so far.
InterInventions: Between Defective Memory and the Public Lie- A Personal
Odyssey in The Republic of Liars (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2015, 136pp) is quite
close to being just that. But who knows if an even nastier book may follow as Soyinka
embarks on the task of exposing lies in our Republic as he has promised that
InterInventions, a follow up to Interventions series (I-IV) will be dedicated
solely to the dismantling of lies in the public space: malicious and
non-malicious lies, lies told, lies magnified, lies fraudulent, murderous lies,
accidental lies, uttered from depraved minds whose sole intention is to create
burdens for their victims, malign, impugn and lower the other so they can be
raised or their stomachs can be nourished at other’s expense.
This is nevertheless, a publication
in which Professor Soyinka settles strictly personal scores, but this is no
pamphleteering that he modestly alludes to, but a fine, extended essay in the
distinguished tradition of that form. He is polemical, punchy and critical –
without mercy or measure! There is no deceit, no pulling of punches, not much
of deliberate concealment; it is Soyinka wielding a Bazooka in one hand, and a
gilt-edged knife in the
