22/08/2022
Osofisan Reads Kolera Kolej at Booksellers
Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́ is continuing the reading tour of Kolej Onigba Meji, his Yoruba translation of Femi Osofisan’s Kolera Kolej, an uproariously cynical take on the Nigerian project through the lens of a University administration grappling with an epidemic on the campus in the early years of Nigeria’s independence.
A professor of English at Ohio University, Adéẹ̀kọ́ will be sparring with Osofisan for the second time in a week.
This Thursday evening June 14, 2022, at 4pm, they will be reading from the “two books” at Booksellers Store, on Magazine Road in Jericho, the particular area of Ibadan that was once the hub of Nigerian publishing.
Last Sunday (July 10, 2022) at the Roving Heights Bookstore in Oniru, the not-so- scenic waterfront and potential tourist, “holiday precinct’ of Lagos city, the two of them read a few English and Yoruba chapters back-to-back.
It was clear from the readings what Adéẹ̀kọ́, an English literature scholar with keen enthusiasm for spoken Yoruba Language, saw in Osofisan’s Kolera Kolej. The translation of the book affords him the opportunity to read in high pitched, satirical bombast, that Yoruba broadcasters of the 1960s-1980s were known for.
Published in 1973, Kolera Kolej was one of the earliest statements of arrival by the generation of Nigerian writers who came after the Soyinka-Okigbo-Clark-Achebe generation.
Reading it now and hearing it read and discussed one could see that the book set the tone for the many works of drama, poetry and prose that Osofisan, now widely acclaimed as the country’s most performed playwright, has come to be known for.
