| ANA Review 2019 |
| The overall tone of the contents in this volume still speaks to the realities on the ground. There is that unwritten yet established tradition of literature mediating in the national space especially in trying times after all the core role of literature is to unsettle the space, unravel the truth and build the blocks for the emergence of a free society. Therefore, in this edition of ANA Review, literature and creative writing has taken the stage once again to attack the profanity and vitiating of our commonwealth by those Maria Ajima in 'By the Rivers' categorises as “Our wicked rulers” who “came in stealth” and “Claiming to be the anointed ones.” The ornate voice of the poets crystallised in unanimity of opinion about the pervading “darkness” over the land. Su'eddie Vershima Agema uses 'This Heart Holds Hurt' to throw hard knuckles on the mood of a society taken to task by a looming splash of percolate bees disturbing the peace and denting the horizon. The brutal epigrammatic conclusion, “Night is the colour of pain/a beast that must be tackled,” throws light on the morbidity of a monster that needs more than physical strength to pull off the tender lopes of our national stage. What needs to be done is to tackle “night” and relieve this land of the blast of misfortune pandered by venal gods from within and without. From poem to poem, darkness loomed afloat like lost bangles on the crevices of the sand. Abdulaziz Abdulaziz draws attention to more darkness in his poem, 'On the Helix of my Ear.' He surmises the reality when he notes that, “Dead in the night/It perched on my helix/Like the previous night/It came with its soothing songs…” His earshot nightmare at the moment of thought gets a full blare in the short fiction of Hajaarh Muhammad Bashar whose story, 'Three Shades of Darkness,' a pneumatic segmentation of “darkness” into hues and a rather subtle expose on the new normal of urbanity and the errant characters finding meaning in strange places. |
| Author : Association of Nigerian AUTHORS |
| Published : 2020 |
| Classification : Book |
| Age Ratings : Teens(11yrs - 17yrs) |
| Category : Fiction |
| Number of Pages : 400 |
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Ratings:
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