The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Soyinka, Wole. Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. Pantheon Books, 2021.

Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth has twenty-three chapters and two parts. Part I is comprised of Chapters 1 – 18. Part II is comprised of Chapters 19 – 23. The story unfolds in roughly chronological fashion, but Soyinka relies on flashbacks and character recollections that drive the plot fairly frequently. He also portrays near-simultaneous actions somewhat asynchronously at times, describing events taking place in different parts of the country or having characters recount stories of past events that were described from different perspectives earlier in the story.

The novel begins by introducing the mysterious figure of Teribogo, a preacher whose church is called Ekumenika. Teribogo goes by many names and aliases throughout the novel. In the context of his religious movement, he is referred to as Papa Davina. Soyinka portrays an encounter with one of his pious disciples, a young woman simply referred to as the Seeker.” Teribogo, it is soon discovered is influentially connected to the Nigerian political class. This class is then described at length. Key personages in the People on the Move Party, diminutively referred to as POMP emerge descriptively early in the novel. Sir Godfrey Danfere, colloquially called Sir Goddie, is the Prime Minister and most powerful figure in the party. He is something of a godfather in modern Nigerian politics, pulling strings from the behind the scenes. Chief Udensi Oromataya is another key figure in the party, influential because of his media empire. The narrator describes the history of POMP’s concoction of People’s Choice Awards, national honors that rivet the nation help brand it as the happiest on earth.

Teribogo’s alliance with POMP power is highly intricate and symbiotic. The narrator describes the checkered background of Teribogo, an itinerant preacher and top-notch opportunist and self-publicist who honed his spiritual charisma outside of Nigeria after a failed career as an actor and ad man. Teribogo spent time in US immigration detention facilities and host of West African nations, as well an early stint as a university student in the United Kingdom. He reinvents himself upon return to Nigeria, and establishes a mass church of highly syncretic customs, drawing from all the world’s major religions.

The life of Prince Badetona features prominently in the next section of the novel. Badetona is a brilliant statistician and accountant who encounters a series of mishaps that bring him, begrudgingly, to seek guidance from Teribogo. Badetona’s wife Jaiyesola goads him into this prudent course of action. Ultimately Badetona’s fate is sealed by his contact with Teribogo and he ends up getting detained for money laundering. Badetona, the reader soon learns, is part of a group of childhood friends knowns as the Gong of Four. Duyole Pitan-Payne is the lifeblood and driving persona behind the group. He is introduced in conversation with his wife Bisoye, who encourages him to pay a visit to Sir Goddie in Abuja, to thank him for his nomination to Nigeria’s seat on the United Nations Energy Committee. Duyole passes a tortuous term of waiting in Sir Goddie’s ministerial headquarters at Villa Potencia, observing the rites of the top echelosn of power. He strikes up a revealing conversation with Special Adviser to the Prime Minister, Shakere Garuba, who enlightens Duyole as to the nature of hagiographic political marketing.

Another member of the Gong of Four, Dr. Kighare Menka, is then introduced. Menka is a surgeon living in the city of Jos, in the Plateau State of Nigeria. Jos is a peculiar place, with many relics of its colonial past, including Menka’s social club, Hilltop Manor. Menka has recently been awarded a prestigious national honor for his work treating victims of Boko Haram and Islamic State – West Africa Province. Menka’s daily work is incredibly taxing. He sees the proliferation of cruelty and all manner of domestic violence firsthand. For this reason, his clubmates’ lighthearted banter about violence in Nigeria disgusts him. At a reception held in his honor at Hilltop Manor he calls them out as hypocrites and vulgar, aloof elites. The narration then reveals that Menka has received a peculiar proposition from an illicit operation that traffics in human body parts. They are interested in coopting Menka as a covert supplier. Menka relays this to some of his clubmats, Kufeji, Costello, and Baba Baftau. They all take a keen interest in this racket and Menka’s desire to expose it. As they plan to investigate further, the club is mysteriously set ablaze. This prompts Menka to move to Lagos, with his friend Duyole. They plan to build a rehabilitation clinic, financed by Duyole and his influential engineering firm, Brand of the Land. Duyole is set to depart for New York for his UN appointment. Before leaving, however, Menka seeks his help in deciphering an encrypted message recovered from the human body part trafficking operation’s base outside Jos. Soon after, Duyole is the victim of an explosive device planted in his workshop in Badagry. Duyole requires emergency medical care. While lying in the hospital he requests his briefcase.

Duyole’s son Damien is sent to fetch it but mysteriously does not do so. Instead he brings back what he presumes is the document that his father wants from the briefcase. Duyole’s situation deteriorates substantially. His family arranges emergency medical airlift to Austria where he can be treated at the university teaching hospital in Salzburg, where he once studied. Part II of the novel begins with Duyole’s death in Salzburg. His father and three siblings oddly insist on burying him there, as opposed to repatriating his body to Nigeria. This causes much consternation to Menka, Bisoye, and Duyole’s two daughters, Katia and Debbie. Acting in their interest, and in what he learns are Duyole’s prescribed wishes in his will, Menka arranges the repatriation of Duyole’s corpse after the funeral in Salzburg. After another funeral in Badagry, Sir Goddie and Teribogo devise a rebranded ceremony to honor the prominent vanquished statesman in Menka’s home village of Gumchi, where Duyole had stipulated in hiw will that his fortune should be put towards helping build a medical clinic. Sir Goddie’s plan is to milk the event for political capital, while Teribogo’s is to use it break ground on a new pilgrimage site for his religious empire. This plan is complicated at the last moment by the Indian geologist Mukarjee, contracted by Sir Goddie’s government to prospect for rare earth metal deposits in Gumchi’s Zamfara State. Mukarjee informs Sir Goddie of this. Sir Goddie improvises during the opening ceremony and hastily abandons his prior plans. Teribogo is disquieted by this eleventh hour revision to their co-authored scheme. This leads to the pair hashing out the forms of collateral that each has over the other. Teribogo reveals to Sir Goddie his role in the murder of Duyole Pitan-Payne and his co-optation of Damien into the human body part trafficking ring that he runs. Sir Goddie then indicates that he knows of Teribogo’s past as the presumed missing member of the Gong of Four, known as Farodion. Farodion, under his new guise, has been masterminding his own ascent at the expense of his youthful comrades. Sir Goddie is impressed his plucky audacity and boundless ambition. The two men, potential rivals and collaborators, agree that the grubby business of maintaining and managing their hold on power must persist.