Isidore OkpewhoCritiques

This Nigerian novel is written in an epistolary form. Two reporters who have been fired from the national newspaper exchange letters. The younger reporter has remained in Lagos, and the older reporter has retired to the small fishing village in the delta where he grew up. The older reporter wants nothing further to do with politics; however, he is approached by some of the fishermen in the village whose livelihood is being threatened by oil drilling activities offshore. The two reporters begin to investigate these activities and the ecological damages they are causing, and are faced with corporate brutality and government corruption.

This is an interesting story, probably much of which has some basis in fact. It raises issues that confront many developing nations. A public official tells the reporters "the usual things you would expect of a public servant: the value of oil to the economy, the oil pollution as part of the price we have to pay, the government's deep concern for the welfare of the people most immediately affected by the hazards, and so on and so forth." The reporters and the fishermen feel that the benefits to the economy come at too high a cost.

I'm not sure why the author chose to make this an epistolary novel. That form seemed to me to be awkward. However, I read it simply as a novel with two narrators, and pretty much ignored the irrelevant pleasantries exchanged in the letters.½