Literature

Conan Doyle’s Imaginary World & Empire

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Empire is pivotal to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holme’s stories. India, South Africa, the Andaman Islands, Sierra Leone and of course Australia and New Zealand form a substantial part of his imaginary landscape. This is true, right from the beginning. In A Study in Scarlet, we are introduced to Dr Watson who took his degree of Doctor of Medicine from University of London in 1878. He joined the Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon and was stationed with his regiment in India as the second Afghan war broke out. He arrived In Bombay and then Candahar (sic). He served in Maiwand and was invalided out after being struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet. He was removed by packhorse to safety and landed in Peshawar where he was further struck down by dysentery.

Madness in the Centre

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Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin is a powerful and bleak novel set in Nazi Germany during World War II. It is based on a real Gestapo case file, and explores individual resistance in a totalitarian regime, focusing on the quiet rebellion of an ordinary couple, Otto and Anna Quangel, in Berlin.

Pericles’ Athens

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'Let me say that our system of government does not copy the institutions of our neighbours. It is more a case of our being a model for others […] Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty'.

Marquez’s Until August

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Marquez’s Until August is about female infidelity. But it is also a love story. It is a special book because of its origin. It was written whilst Marquez was already losing his memory and as his children recount in the Preface, Marquez said ‘Memory is at once my source material and my tool. Without it, there’s nothing.’

Graham Greene’s Cheap in August

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Borges in his short story “Kafka and his Precursors” makes the point that as he came to read more of Kafka, he could ‘recognise his voice, or his practices, in texts from diverse literatures and periods’. Borges lists Zeno, Han Yu, Kierkegaard, Browning Léon Bloy, and Lord Dunsany

Mythopoetics of George Seferis

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George Seferis was born Giorgos Seferiadis on March 13, 1900, in Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). He is regarded as one of Greece's most celebrated poets and a Nobel Prize laureate. His work is characterized by its deep connection to Greek history and mythology, its modernist aesthetic, and its exploration of themes such as exile, memory,…

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Philip K Dick’s The Electric Ant

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It is Dick's exploration of existential questions and the malleability of reality that I am concerned with in this blog. The short story “The Electric Ant” deals with what it means to be human and how the experiences of an android might differ, if at all, from that of a human being. Our protagonist Garson Poole wakes up in hospital to find that he is missing his right hand and that he feels no pain. This is the start of his discovery that he is not human, after all, but an android. It is in fact a horrible awakening

Ray Bradbury’s The Earth Men

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Captain Williams and three of his men arrive on Mars and walk into the closest town, knocking on doors and announcing their arrival but are surprised and saddened to discover that no one seems impressed at what they believe to be a momentous event, travelling from Earth to Mars by rocket

Rita Dove’s Portraits Without Brushes

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I think of Rita Dove as a portrait poet, a poet who without paint brushes, captures the essence of a subject, giving voice and character, also giving a probing uniqueness, a singularity to the person.

Hitchcock’s Pranks

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My memory of Hitchcock dates back to the 60s, when I was a schoolboy in Lagos. We had taken possession of our first TV, a Sanyo, in a mahogany box. Everyone else that we knew had a Grundig TV, a box with a walnut finish. That was a time when American series were taking over from British fare on Nigerian TV. We watched the likes of Hitchcock Hour, The Twilight Zone, and incomprehensible comedies such as Sergeant Bilko, Lucille Ball Show and so on. The American accents seemed more normal, somehow more euphonious compared to what we heard on Z cars, and Steptoe & Son.