Anthills of the Savannah

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Chris, Ikem and Beatrice are like-minded friends working under the military regime of His Excellency, the Sandhurst-educated President of Kangan. In the pressurized atmosphere of oppression and intimidation they are simply trying to live and love - and remain friends. But in a world where each day brings a new betrayal, hope is hard to cling on to. Anthills of the Savannah (1987), Achebe's candid vision of contemporary African politics, is a powerful fusion of angry voices. It continues the journey that Achebe began with his earlier novels, tracing the history of modern Africa through colonialism and beyond, and is a work ultimately filled with hope.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

``This bitterly ironic novel by the Nigerian author of Things Fall Apart is at times more of a polemic than dramatic narrative, but it presents a candid, trenchantly insightful view of contemporary Africa,'' wrote PW of the portrait of a West African military coup leader, and his moral deterioration. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Achebe's great tetralogy stands as the most significant literary statement of the African condition. Things Fall Apart (1959), Arrow of God (1967), No Longer at Ease (1960), and Man of the People (CH, Feb '68) detail the tragic human consequences of European intervention with both sympathy and understanding. Achebe's anguish at the butchery of the Nigerian civil war virtually silenced him. There were poems, a few short stories, and a vehement complaint. The Trouble With Nigeria (1984). Now, after 20 years, there is a new novel. It is set in Kangan, a fictional African country markedly like Idi Amin's Uganda. The young army officer/president sustains his coup with an increasingly paranoid violence imposed on a country that becomes both corrupt and resentful. Two idealistic ex-school friends, Chris Oriko and Ikem Osodi, are driven into opposition and resistance. They are ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed. Achebe's angry passion is obvious. The novel itself is rather less convincing. it lacks the calculated structure and ironic reversals that made his earlier works so profound. There is a preference for long discussion and explanation. The anxieties of the participants are described rather than rendered visible through action. Yet the appalling events, so close to the contemporary African reality, offer much for thought and a master hand is still evident. This is a novel of ideas presented by an author who is still able to express his bitter condemnation of the errors and cruelties of modern Africa. It will be read with concern by a wide readership.-J.F. Povey, University of California, Los Angeles

Booklist Review

The leader of an African Third World country who was brought into power by a revolution finds himself the victim of political backlash when an election fails to confirm him as president for life. But the main characters in Achebe's new novel are the people who knew this man as a student and who helped him early on to consolidate his control before he pushed the nation onto the road to dictatorship. The lives of these former friends and colleagues are now endangered as the president begins to suspect that enemies in his administration are attempting to thwart his future dynastic ambitions and to expose his past. As an observer of the emergence of African nationhood, the novelist presents a droll and fierce picture of the politics of liberation as well as individual portraits of the human emotions that function within this complex of patriotism versus power. Achebe is also the author of A Man of the People (Booklist 63:228 O 15 66). JB. [OCLC] 87-30565

Kirkus Book Review

A superb new work from the Nigerian author of Things Fall Apart (1959), his first novel in over 20 years. In the depleted, post-colonial West African state of Kengan, a military coup ushers a promising young officer into the role of president. Lucky, bright, but terminally afraid of a counterinsurrection, the President, a.k.a. His Excellency, fails in a referendum bid to install himself as President for Life. As his paranoia gradually chokes all remnants of due process, the slide to tyranny is observed through three key witnesses: Chris, the Commissioner of Information; Ikem, poet and editor of the National Gazette; and Beatrice, a senior civil servant. Cabinet meetings have been reduced to ritualistic gestures of subservience to the President, who lords it over his Ministers with the malicious glee of a chiding schoolmaster, but Chris at first can't summon the courage to resign his post. He does attempt, however, to warn Ikem that a storm is brewing, but to no avail: Ikem continues to caricature the President in National Gazette editorials, and His Excellency finds the right pretext to suspend his duties as editor when Ikem is seen drinking with delegates from a supposedly seditious province. Having no way of knowing just how out of control the President's anxiety has become, Ikem delivers a speech to a group of students--and the President raises the stakes by having the ex-editor arrested and ""fatally wounded in a scuffle."" Chris, sensing he's next in line, escapes through a chain of safe houses to a rural province, where he learns that a new coup has toppled His Excellency's regime. In a final ironic twist, Chris is murdered during celebrations of the President's fall before he has a chance to size up the threat of this new coup's emerging star. Tough, tight-lipped, and shrewd, this one reestablishes Achebe's place as a leading voice in African literature. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.