Wole Soyinka: Aké - The Years of Childhood

[Bjorn]

Aké - The Years of Childhood, the first volume of Nigerian Nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka's (possibly slightly fictionalised) autobiography, is the first book of his I've read. For most authors, an autobiography is probably not the best place to start; most of the time, I want a reason to care about what the author has done before getting into his life story.

In this case, though, it doesn't disappoint at all. Aké chronicles young Wole's childhood up to about 11 years of age, and given that he was born in 1934, that's a fairly tumultuous time. While the world war rages somewhere just beyond the horizon, Nigeria is somewhere in between the old ways and the new ones, stuck between old tribal kingdoms and the new world, the old religion and Christianity, the old language and English, still ruled by the British but beginning to find a new identity of its own - which isn't an easy process, as shown by the occasional sobering flash-forward to Nigeria in the early 80s.

Soyinka spins this into an amazingly vivid tale, which doesn't shy away from dark subjects but tackles it all with a great sense of humour and the wide eyes of a child who, at first, doesn't understand half of what's going on around him. In a slightly unusual but very well-crafted narrative, he tells the whole story from the perspective of himself as a child (I'm somewhat reminded of Roth's The Plot Against America) which means that as he grows up, the story becomes more intricate, the adult characters more three-dimensional, and his observations more astute; mirroring, in a way, a young country starting to find its footing (Nigeria wouldn't achieve independence until 1960). As with many childhood stories, it's more of an episodic tale than a straight narrative, which means that it tends to be a little disjointed and slow-paced at times - but even then the fantastically colourful prose makes it worth it. For all the times the book makes me crack up laughing, or even be nostalgic for a time I've never lived in in a country I never visited and a culture I was never part of, there's always the sly adult Soyinka somewhere behind it, using his young self as an only mostly reliable narrator to describe how we come to understand - and challenge - the world.