*Lazarus the albino in the field of cotton (creation of one's own myth)
*Goldman the gay white man who uses Baldwin/Another Country to pick people up
*the streetlights flicking on, fighting the electric power that's stronger than them
*Sekoni building the power plant that is rejected by authority; he later goes crazy
*Sir Derinola emerging from the hideous wardrobe in a bra and top hat (appears before Sagoe the journalist, who is nursing his hangover)

Che romanzo faticoso. Con la peggiore traduzione in cui mi sia mai imbattuta.
La storia narra di un gruppo di giovani nigeriani che rientrano in patria dopo aver studiato e lavorato all'estero. Siamo in piena decolonizzazione, ma i ragazzi, seri e pieni di speranza per una patria nuova, si scontreranno contro antichi pregiudizi, corruzione, cavilli, disonestà.
Il romanzo alterna uno stile semplice e diretto a pagine postmoderne e oniriche in cui è difficile districarsi.

This Nigerian playwright tells the life of a group of young Nigerians who are educated abroad but do not feel identified with any of both cultures. A two-part book shows how the lives of the characters take place in a cultural, social and political environment where the problem of the corruption of people who suddenly ascend is shown by people who need to survive on their own without anyone's help. As we read, we see how other characters that appear throughout the chapters also play an important role.

It is a very good novel with a high level of literary and meticulous quality. The reader will have to read carefully because one can get lost among the characters in wanting to find a protagonist ...

He de confessar que he començat unes 3 vegades el llibre. Se me'n va el pensament i perdo el fil. A la pàgina 58 m'adono que encara no sé qui són els intèrprets.
El llibre no m'ha atrapat. No sé interessar-me per les històries dels personatges. Així que desisteixo i el deixo.

A very well written novel despite the sometimes disorientating switches between the present moment and the
character's memories/dreams.

I really enjoyed the absurdist humour which was sprinkled through what was otherwise a serious and sometimes quite dramatic tale.

مش عارفة المشكلة في الرواية نفسها ولا في الترجمة ولا في اختلاف الثقافات ولا فيا أنا بس أنا محبتهاش حاسة الأحداث مفككة والسرد بيجيب من هنا ومن هنا وكل شوية نطلع من حتة نروح في حتة تانية خالص من غير تمهيد وفي لخبطة في الأسامي بس أعتقد دي من المترجم (نسخة روايات الهلال ترجمة محمد جلال عباس سنة 1987)
أنا فهمت مجمل المعنى يعني بس مفهمتش اللي هو ماشي بعدين أنا المفروض أطلع من الرواية دي بايه؟ حاسة ايه طب؟ مفيش حاجة خالص أنا زي ما دخلتها زي ما طلعتها محستش انها اضافت لي أي شيء

Read several years ago; a wonderful book. Should read again.

The whole Wole.

I’m sure it’s possible to read The Interpreters as a representative narrative of postcolonial Nigeria’s sociopolitical climate and the Biafran War. With a little effort we could fit each protagonist into some archetypical mentality inherited from colonial elitism. Like I notice other reviewers doing, we could thereby explore the novel as a matrix of myth creation that conglomerates traditional heritages with neocolonial mismanagement.

However, I don’t think an application of any such structuralism provides a useful apparatus for coming to terms with The Interpreters. This novel is so baffling, no guiding framework will be able to conjure meaning beyond that initial question of ‘how can I proceed forwards despite my initial state of fascination/confusion/displeasure’? There’s no plot, the characters’ personalities are inconsistent, and the structure is totally bizarre. You never really know where or when you are. Symbolised by Voidancy- the novel’s emergent ‘philosophy of shit’- Soyinka realises all interpretations are disposable. The Interpreters happily continues irrespective of your narrative. Verbose, obfuscating, schizophrenic… and mesmerising.

So I tried to embrace the novel’s absurdity. If ‘educating’ the reader at all, Soyinka prioritises fiction’s propensity for defamiliarisation and deautomatonisation. Like Achebe, Soyinka lets ’Things Fall Apart’. Shouldn’t we allow ourselves to enjoy something that arrives at no coherent interpretation? Can it be productive for the critic to move away from the interpretative fallacy? I think yes, so I’m giving this 4 stars even though it’s equally deserving of 1 or 2 or 3 or 5 or less or more. Soyinka allows us to create new knowledges of literary study, asking why something has to be interpretable for it to be ‘good’, or good to be ‘interpretable’. I’ve been encouraged to think these questions before and it’s beautiful because Wole lets you think them all over again for the first time.

Soyinka is clearly a gifted writer with something to say. There are some incredible passages. However, I found this a rather difficult book. I had trouble keeping track of what was going on and who was who, and I struggled to connect with any of the characters.

Ich habe das Buch für meine damalige "Länder"-Challenge gelesen, wo es als Vertreter für Nigeria fungierte. Ansonsten kann ich mich nicht mehr an sehr viel erinnern, nur dass ich es glaub ich ziemlich langweilig fand und es wohl nie zur Hand genommen hätte, wenn ich es nicht für diese Challenge gebraucht hätte.

Four men, friends since childhood, come to grips with their modern way of life upon returning to Nigeria from years spent in other countries. The Interpreters, by the usually-poet Wole Soyinka, is funny, touching and compelling. The characters are intellectuals, and caricatures at times. Written as a whole generation around the world was entering what we can now recognise as massive states of change, this book doubles as an interesting historical document of ideas and attitudes told with the wry and witty voice of Soyinka.

The novel can be read as a series of vignettes with well-developed characters. It starts confusingly, mostly because there are a lot of people involved in a chaotic drinking scene. Like otherworldly figures, the friends seem for a while outside of the world of mortals, and then they increasingly become entangled in it. Each vignette is fascinating: a new power scheme for a village is cancelled by corruption; a high society party features plastic fruit-throwing; a faux religion made of criminals tries to reshape the world; a new philosophy of scatology is written.

Some of the delivery is dated (treatment of homosexual and female characters is insensitive, although not as poorly handled as many novels of the time) but other issues (modernity, race) are very cleverly placed as points of satire or story. Overall a brilliant, playful novel.

...grew up reading and re-reading this...still have many memories of it!