Matters of the Moment

by Tanure Ojaide

At the onset of this novel is the return of the journalist Dede Daro from the USA, where he had taken a graduate degree at one of the universities...Not surprisingly, Dede's return is the buzz of the town (Warri). In an overuse of proverbs, the elders make it known that they had expected him to go far. ..Amongst those eagerly awaiting Dede's return is of course the inevitable woman. In contrast to Dede's triumphant return, Franka is presented as the victim of life's terrible blows: she would lose her father to a snake's venomous bite; her not too educated but well- meaning mother had to work hard to see that her daughter got as good an education as the local schools could provide. Franka herself would undergo some dire deprivation in early life. Thus throughout the novel, it would seem as though the blight of poverty had marred Franka's judgments, when confronted with choices, about life. Her marriage to Dede ended in a bitter divorce, and while Dede meets another woman, Furu, with whom he was to know some kind of plenitude of his spirit, Franka descends from one fruitless relationship to another until, not surprisingly, she ends up in the bed of General Ogiso, the semi-literate and murderous military president of the country...

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