The Interpreters

by Wole Soyinka

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The Interpreters is the debut novel by Nobel Prize–winning Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka (born 1934), who, though he wrote a total of three novels during his lifetime, is best known as the author of plays such as The Lion and the Jewel and The Dance of the Forests. Written in English and first published in 1965, the novel is divided into two sections and is set mainly in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, and Ibadan, a university town, in the 1960s.

The novel’s multiple storylines follow the diverse characters Wole Soyinka includes in The Interpreters, who serve as the models for traditional Yoruba deities that Kola, an artist, inserts into a complex painting in the novel. Joe is an American with an African background who hopes to find answers about his identity-related questions; all the other characters who turn up in Kola’s massive canvas are Nigerians who have lived and studied abroad and now are back home in the heady years after independence, which Nigeria achieved in 1960, and before the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–1970. Joe’s importance also relates to his creativity through singing, as the painting is first viewed at his concert.

Rather than employing a traditional structure with a single protagonist, Woyinka gives many of the characters equal weight. The ensemble of scholars and artists harmonizes much like a musical composition, strengthening the importance of Joe and music as synecdoche for artistic creativity more generally. Kola, while motivated by his commitment to interpret traditional Yoruba culture, also admires and perhaps envies another artist, the sculptor Sekoni, who has left his engineering career—though not entirely of his free will, as he is pushed out of a project by corrupt political machinations and later dies in a tragic accident.

Soyinka explores the diverse approaches that young Nigerians took to building a nation in the trying times after the British finally relinquished control. The role of Ibadan’s national university is also significant, as part of the country’s rebuilding process included establishing and supporting its own educational institutions—which would help stop the “brain drain.”

The lasting influence of British society and the ambivalent Nigerian attitudes is represented by Dr. Oguazor, who has married an English woman and is dismayed at the criticism their marriage provokes. The highly charged emotional environment that matches the political upheavals is especially shown through the journalist Sagoe (the trickster Esu in the painting) and the dissatisfied bureaucrat Edo (the world-mover, Ogun, in the painting), who are contrasted to the intellectual history professor Bandele, who is represented as Orisa-nla.

While the challenges of post-independence society affect everyone, racial, gender, and sexual issues complicate the situation further. Rather than merely trying to interconnect traditional Yoruba and modern, Westernized cultures, characters such as Joe—who is gay and American as well as part white—and Lazarus (a Black African man with albinism) embody these issues. While the female characters generally play minor roles, the question of women’s access to education is raised, as is the question of the difficulty of having a career.

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