A Survey of African Poetry in the London Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement 1865-1985

Independent Africa has produced a big crop of novelists, but so far the only dramatist we know anything about is the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. But with Soyinka on the scene African drama is a force to be reckoned with. After last year's production of The Road, and now The Trials of Brother Jero, performed by an African company from the Transcription Centre Theatre Workshop, he appears as an extremely sophisticated craftsman working within a rich folk tradition: given the present impoverished state of our own language, his contribution to English-speaking drama could grow into something as important as Sygne's opening up of the Western isles...