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A Month and a Day and Letters

by Ken Saro-Wiwa - £9.99  Ayebia Clarke Publishing (2005)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9780954702359 | ISBN 10: 0954702352

"Many people still remember how they felt when Ken Saro-Wiwa was judicially murdered. Some of us have spent the period trying to forget, as a strategy to mask our pain..."
(Ken Wiwa, from a speech at the Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa Commemoration, London, 22 March 2005.)

A Month and a Day and Letters includes an edited version of 'A Detention Diary' - Saro-Wiwa's own record of his arrest in July 1993, and the story of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and the struggle against the mulitnational Shell and the military dictatorship. Saro-Wiwa's criticisms and questioning of a corrupt regime eventually led to his execution with eight others on 10 November 1995.
 
This new edition has a Foreword by the Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka. It also includes a letter by Ken Wiwa to his late father 10 years on, and previously unpublished letters smuggled to and from Ken during his final imprisonment. Among these are letters from world leaders, writers and friends incuding Nelson Mandela, Nadine Gordimer, Ethel Kennedy, Anita Roddick and ordinary people from all over the world.
 
This book gives an insight into Ken Saro-Wiwa's ideology, his ultimate sacrifice for the Ogoni people and for all oppressed people, for a world that is sustainable, just and humane. Crucially, it highlights the central role that oil companies play in our daily lives. If you want to know why Ken Saro-Wiwa was killed, read his book.

"The writer is his cause, I am more and more convinced... that the path of literature is the assured way to human salvation and civilisation. I hail the power of the pen."
(Ken Saro-Wiwa, writing to the President of International PEN, 3 September 1993)

(Price & availability last checked: May 2018)

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