Novel
One Man, One Wife
T. M. Aluko · 1959
Synopsis
In a Yoruba village, a few inhabitants have converted and the church has built its school. The converts must send away their wives and keep only one: that is the price of the new faith. The catechist, the chiefs of custom and the pastor who has come from the town clash over marriages, baptisms and the respect owed to elders, while the storm is taken for the anger of the god of thunder. Everyone must choose a side.
Context
The book came out in Lagos, from Nigerian Printing and Publishing, bound in blue boards and sold for twelve shillings and six pence. Its author was then a public works engineer and wrote only in his spare time; he had made a name for himself with short stories awarded prizes in Great Britain and read on the BBC's African airwaves. A preface warns that the village of Isola and the town of Idasa are imaginary, and that their relations describe no real situation in Yorubaland. Heinemann reissued it in 1967 in its African series, with a reprint in 1970.
Who it is for
Two hundred pages of simple English, driven by irony rather than by attack. Nothing in French. It is best to know that polygamy was the rule and that converting meant sending wives away.
Prizes and reception
The first Nigerian novel in English published by a firm in the country. Its reissue in Heinemann's African series made it a school text in English-speaking Africa.