SOURCE: Gibbs, James. Review of Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: A Memoir, 1946-65, by Wole Soyinka. World Literature Today 69, no. 2 (spring 1995): 420.

In the following review, Gibbs commends the insight and wit in Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: A Memoir, 1946-65.

After Aké, his volume of childhood memories, was published in 1983, Wole Soyinka maintained that he would not attempt to give an account of his life beyond “the age of innocence.” In February 1994 he completed Ibadan, with a subtitle that included the word penkelemes—a rendition of “peculiar mess”—and the dates 1946 to 1965, which indicated the book would take the author beyond his thirtieth birthday.

In 1946 Soyinka set off for secondary school in Ibadan; by the end of 1965, he had had confrontations with numerous politicians and policemen and was awaiting trial on the charge of holding up the Ibadan radio station. At that point he had fathered four children by three...