Memoirs

A memoir in the conventional genre this is not; it is rather more delightful than that. This is a cornucopia of stories told with the salt of irony and the mouth of wisdom as the master teller makes certain that ‘A story must be factual, not imagined, and must capture the drama of places and faces’ (p. 138). So while this work certainly is a literary masterwork to be enjoyed for its own sake, it is not just literature: it also recreates people and things past.

Despite its deceiving appearance though this definitely is an African Memoir: a memoir about growing up in Ibadan and gradually discovering the world, a memoir of the social history of the city of Ibadan between 1953 and 1966, and above all a memoir about the acquisition of identity. The main plot line tells us of the various metamorphoses the hero undergoes gradually to emerge as the Yoruba teenager known as Toyin Falola. The tale opens with the intricacies of dating births and with naming to create an early identity. Then follow the praises of Ibadan, the soil in which the forebears flourished, Ibadan, the metropolis that engenders violent behavior and raises ambiguity to an art. Next, the nine-year-old is first lost to a fascination with trains and then recovered which makes clear that he is no ordinary child but rather the dreaded sort