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Transcription: [00:09:18]
The night was very quiet, it was always quiet except on moonlight nights.
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Darkness held a vague terror over these people, even the bravest of them.
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Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits.
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Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark.
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A snake was never called by its name at night, because it will hear.
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It was called a string, and so on this particular night, as the crier's voice was gradually swallowed up in the distance,
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silence came to the world, a vibrant silence made more intense by the universal trill of a million insects.
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{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
I think what you just heard was an excellent example of Achebe's work.
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Note the clarity and the descriptiveness used in the writing.
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The note about the snake – here again, Achebe is relating culture and custom
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as well as the incidents going on in the story that he presents.
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But of course Achebe is just one of Africa's most prominent African English writers.
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Now Eastern Africa has one of the oldest traditions in oral literature,
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and many of Africa's prominent poets come out of this area.
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But as far as prose fiction writers or novelists are concerned
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Eastern Africa –who are also a very late a very late bloomer–
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the most famous, and most important East African writers appeared in the 60s.
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People like Josiah Kariuki, who wrote in '63 Mau Mau Detainee and in '64 A Child of Two Worlds.
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You also had James Thiong'o Ngugi, who wrote Weep Not Child in '64, as well as The River Between in '65.
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Now, both writers Kariuki and Ngugi are Kenyans, and they write about their country's struggles to overthrow (--)