Reading Order
The Interpreters Reading Order
The Interpreters (1965) by Wole Soyinka is the first major novel by the man who would become the first African Nobel Laureate in Literature (1986) — a dense, modernist, jazz-inflected account of five young Nigerian intellectuals in Lagos in the first years after independence, who 'interpret' the new Nigeria they have inherited and find it wanting. Sekoni, Sagoe, Kola, Egbo, and Bandele — a sculptor, a journalist, an artist, a civil servant, and a teacher — meet in bars, parties, and universities; they argue, drink, paint, travel, and struggle with the gap between the independence Nigeria was supposed to become and the corruption, mediocrity, and compromise that it has in fact become. Soyinka's prose in The Interpreters is the most formally demanding of any major African novel of its era: non-linear, allusion-dense, written in a stream of consciousness mode that owes as much to Joyce and Faulkner as to any African literary tradition. The novel is notoriously difficult — it requires multiple readings and patient attention to untangle its chronology and its cast of characters — but it rewards that attention with an account of post-independence Nigeria that is more psychologically complex and aesthetically ambitious than anything else written in the period. Soyinka is interested not in the political structures of post-independence corruption (though those are present) but in the psychologies of individuals who are intelligent enough to see the gap between the promise and the reality but not able to do anything about it. The interpreters interpret; they do not act. Whether this is tragic or honest is the novel's unresolved question.
Where to start
The Interpreters — any edition, but the New Horn Press Nigerian edition is authoritative. The novel requires multiple readings; on the first pass, track the five main characters and don't worry about chronology. The structure clarifies on re-reading.
Complete The Interpreters Book List
- 1Buy
The Interpreters
Wole Soyinka·1965·The novel — five young Lagos intellectuals interpreting post-independence Nigeria in a modernist, Joyce-influenced narrative that remains the most formally ambitious African novel of its period. - 2Buy
Season of Anomy
Wole Soyinka·1973·Soyinka's second novel — more political and allegorical than The Interpreters; set during the Nigerian civil war and drawing on the Orpheus myth. - 3Buy
The Man Died
Wole Soyinka·1972·Soyinka's prison memoir — he was imprisoned during the Nigerian civil war for attempting to negotiate peace; essential context for understanding the political biography behind his fiction. - 4Buy
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe·1958·Achebe's foundational novel — the essential companion in Nigerian literature; where Achebe writes realist historical fiction, Soyinka writes modernist psychology of the independence generation. - 5Buy
No Longer at Ease
Chinua Achebe·1960·Achebe's Lagos novel of post-colonial corruption — the realist counterpart to The Interpreters; the same educated Nigerian in the same Lagos, but rendered in a more accessible narrative mode. - 6Buy
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Ayi Kwei Armah·1968·Armah's Ghanaian novel of post-independence disillusionment — published three years after The Interpreters; the West African parallel, in a different formal register (sensory realism vs. Soyinka's modernism). - 7Buy
Petals of Blood
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o·1977·Ngũgĩ's Kenyan novel — the East African account of the same post-independence disillusionment; more politically explicit than The Interpreters but engaged with the same historical failure. - 8Buy
Ulysses
James Joyce·1922·Joyce's stream-of-consciousness masterpiece — the formal model for The Interpreters' non-linear, allusion-dense prose; the modernist tradition that Soyinka absorbed and applied to Nigerian material.
The Interpreters — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Interpreters about?
The Interpreters follows five young Nigerian intellectuals in Lagos in the early 1960s — the first years after independence. Sekoni is a sculptor and engineer who has a breakdown after his idealistic engineering project is blocked by corruption; Sagoe is a journalist with an elaborate scatological philosophy ('Voidancy') and a complicated relationship with his wealthy boss's daughter Dehinwa; Kola is a painter working on a large canvas depicting the Yoruba pantheon; Egbo is a civil servant who is heir to a chieftaincy he refuses to accept; and Bandele is a university teacher, the most stable of the five. The novel follows their intersecting lives — their arguments, their loves, their encounters with corruption and mediocrity — without a strong narrative arc. The title proposes that their role is to interpret the new Nigeria; the novel asks whether interpretation without action is sufficient.
Why is The Interpreters considered so difficult?
The Interpreters is the most formally demanding major African novel of the 1960s. Its difficulties include: non-linear chronology (the novel moves between different periods without clear transitions); a large cast of characters who are introduced by various names and nicknames and whose relationships must be reconstructed; a prose style that shifts between omniscient narration, stream of consciousness, and extended metaphorical passages; and dense allusions to Yoruba mythology, Western modernist literature, and 1960s Nigerian politics. Soyinka is working in the tradition of Joyce's Ulysses and Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury rather than the accessible realism of Achebe. The difficulty is part of the novel's statement: interpreting the complexity of post-independence Nigeria requires the same effort as interpreting the novel.
How does Yoruba mythology function in The Interpreters?
Yoruba mythology — particularly the Yoruba pantheon of deities (orishas) — is present throughout The Interpreters in multiple ways: in Kola's large painting of the Yoruba pantheon (onto which he maps his friends and acquaintances); in the symbolic associations of particular orishas (Ogun, the orisha of iron, creativity, and destruction; Obatala, the creator deity) with particular characters; and in the mythological resonances of specific episodes. Soyinka, unlike Achebe (who draws on Igbo tradition) or Okri (who draws on Yoruba spirit-world mythology in a different mode), uses Yoruba mythology as an interpretive framework for understanding the moral psychology of his characters and the post-independence situation. The mythological dimension is the novel's deepest layer and the hardest for non-Yoruba readers to access without contextual knowledge.
What is Voidancy and why does it matter?
Voidancy is Sagoe's elaborate comic-philosophical system — the idea that defecation (the 'void') is the fundamental social and biological act, and that a philosophy built on it would be more honest than the idealistic philosophies that independence-era Nigerians are using to paper over the country's corruption. Sagoe is the novel's satirical voice, and his scatological philosophy is a grotesque mirror of Armah's physical disgust in The Beautyful Ones: both use bodily waste as a metaphor for the corruption of the post-independence state. Voidancy is also, for a Western reader, the most obviously comic element of a novel that is otherwise challenging and demanding — Soyinka uses Sagoe's grotesque humor as a release valve within a formally difficult work.
What should I read after The Interpreters?
After The Interpreters, Soyinka's Season of Anomy (1973) and his prison memoir The Man Died (1972) are essential. His plays — particularly Death and the King's Horseman (1975) — are more widely read than his fiction and are an important entry point. For Nigerian literary companions, Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease and Anthills of the Savannah address related questions in more accessible modes. For comparable modernist African fiction, Yambo Ouologuem's Bound to Violence (1968) and Sony Labou Tansi's Life and a Half (1979, translated 2011) are important alternatives from francophone Africa.
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