Novel
Kolera Kolej
Femi Osofisan · 1975
Synopsis
Cholera strikes an African university. To stop the contagion, the authorities take the simplest decision imaginable: they cut the campus off from the rest of the country and declare it a sovereign republic. The new nation immediately gives itself a leader, a flag, an anthem, a police force and internal enemies; the professors become ministers and squabble over portfolios while the epidemic carries on its work.
Context
The book was published in Ibadan by New Horn Press, a house set up by academics of the city, and was the first volume published by its author, then a young lecturer of twenty-nine. Dexter Lyndersay staged a version of it in Ibadan in 1976, and the author, who was to become the most frequently performed playwright in the country, later had the narrative and the play reissued under a single cover. The choice to laugh at a subject that did not lend itself to laughter is what critics noted first.
Who it is for
A short text in English, with no French version. The satire is direct and requires no particular knowledge of the country, other than that African independence was then recent.
Prizes and reception
Abiola Irele saw in it a brilliantly funny political comedy, beneath which runs a severe examination of the public life of the continent.