Cronache dalla terra dei più felici al mondo

Abstract

Translation into Italian of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka's 2021 novel Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. Soyinka's Chronicles - published 48 years after his latest novel, The Interpreters - offers a fictional fresco of contemporary Nigeria, a country ridden by political and moral corruption. During the latest political campaigns, Dr. Menka finds out that some colleagues at the hospital where he works sell body parts for ritualistic reasons. Afflicted by such an unexpected discovery, he shares the news with his oldest college friend, bon viveur, star engineer, and Yoruba royal Duyole Pitan-Payne, who is about to leave the country to assume a prestigious post at the United Nations in New York. Neither Dr. Menka nor Duyole know how close the enemy is, and how powerful. Their friendship survives death and betrayal, but the country remains metaphorically dismembered. In the sophisticated, unique language that marks his entire literary, political, poetic, and dramatic production, Soyinka, a literary giant and a fierce political activist, offers a stirring call to arms against the abuse of power. The translator, a scholar specialized in Nigerian literature, renders in Italian a complex text by the dean of African literature, demonstrating how translation is a linguistic as well as a cultural practice.