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    New Internationalist

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    Aug 10, 2021 4 minutes
    Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird
    Reviewers: Peter Whittaker, Jo Lateu, Rahila Gupta

    Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

    Wole Soyinka (Pantheon Books ISBN 9780593320167)

    pantheonbooks.com

    Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate and doyen of African literature, is best known for his plays, poems and essays. A longtime anticorruption activist, he has endured imprisonment and exile. His novels are rare beasts – Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth is just his third. Written at the age of 86 and in the midst of a global pandemic, it is an astonishing achievement.

    The plot centres around four men who, in their student days, formed an idealistic group

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