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Tussles : Collected Plays
(2009)
This collection groups together four plays - The Bite, Things Fall in Place, The Will and The Imprisonment of Sende Ghandi - written between 1995 and 2006. The plays in this volume dramatize a comprehensive world view. Through characters and themes chosen for their power to articulate the intended message, the plays paint a convincing and at times funny picture of human beings tussling with daily life. With clearly non-reductionist purpose, the actions all eschew the narrow minority questions so dominant in Cameroon Anglophone drama and instead reach out to concerns of a broader nature. In these plays Nyamndi does more than entertain. He reaches into the psychology of human relations and individual drives, and intimates responses to occasioned challenges. His wide, penetrating mind meanders in society: detecting the drunk before he takes his first drop; uncovering the embezzler even before he lays his hands on the collective holding; steeling the masses before the calamities of misrule descend on them; hoisting the flag of freedom long before revolutionaries come anywhere near the mast. He uses the play for healing purposes.
Dogs in the Sun
(2009)
This compelling narrative pits the legacies of two men in the village of Nwemba. Winjala the Crude, yardman to the English surveyor Pete Harrington, kills the latter's favourite animal, the big monkey called Stirrup, and runs to his village. Sama Gakoh, washerman to Harrington, also returns home when his services are terminated for age reasons. Both hold clashing views of the white man. They die shortly after their return but their sons pick up and sustain their conflicting philosophies. The drama culminates in the fishing contest where the village chief, Ndelu, takes an unprecedented decision charged with meaning and wisdom. The action is given piquancy by a strong undercurrent of human passion that flies in the face, so to speak, of artifices that divide and alienate. We are dealing here with a profound allegory that brings the classical stereotypes into pointed - and hopefully final - disrepute.
Babi Yar Symphony
(2008)
This unique work lifts the African question out of the dust. Against the backdrop of prison life, it explores the complex reality of being an African in today's world. Through the tight sensitivity and illuminating knowledge of its two principal characters, themselves victims of misplaced justice, greed and lust, it captures the pain and sadness that almost always comes in the wake of betrayal and egotism. The work's message is strong, and is delivered with equal strength by characters whose individual convictions also sway us to their side. We have here a new, powerful shaft of light on the landscape of recent African writing.