Festus Iyayi belongs to the generation of Nigerian writers, including Ben Okri, Niyi Osundare, Wale Ogunyemi, and Kojo Laing, who can be legitimately described as postcolonial. Although he was born in the waning years of the colonial era, his generation experienced colonial rule only as a regime in retreat, making way for Africans' reassumption of self-determination and millennial expectations. As a postcolonial writer Iyayi is preoccupied not with the evils of colonialism but rather with the state of anomie Africans have created on the continent almost everywhere they are in power. He is a pioneer of social realism, a literary approach that analyzes society and its problems in Marxist terms. Like his colleagues, Iyayi identifies with the common people in opposition to the exploiting ruling classes and proffers as a solution to his country's social problems an "alternative tradition" entailing the active political engagement of the people.

Iyayi...