The Putin files, excursions around ideology of pain set for unveiling

Wole Soyinka’s latest Interventions volume, The Putin Files, will be formally unveiled on Friday, June 16, both on-site at Freedom Park, Lagos, and virtually, via Zoom: ID: 819 6827 6619 | Passcode: Kongi. The event is scheduled for 2pm.

Organised by the publishers of the series, Bookcraft Africa, the event will feature readings from the book by Soyinka as well as some members of the audience. It will also have a conversation between the Nobel laureate and Anthony Kila, a professor of political science, and a well-known public affairs analyst and newspaper columnist. Kila is currently international director of studies at the European Centre of Advanced and Professional Studies, CAPS.

The blurb to the book says that Soyinka “with typical ardency, takes on the still unfolding and increasingly brutal war in Ukraine and what its resolution — one way or another — might portend for the future of our very fragile continent.”

On the subject of the book itself, Soyinka writes: “…But why Putin? Why has he overtaken others as the most deserving, today, of my deadly doggerel? … Why should Africa, or any entity that relates to that continent poke her nose in Putin’s business? Of course, that is assuming that the ongoing human catastrophe in the Ukraine is strictly Putin’s business to begin with.”

The Interventions Series, which was begun in 2004, has featured 11 volumes by Professor Soyinka, and two by guest contributors. Usually in essay form, the themes, as Soyinka states in the series’ introduction, “vary literally from the sublime to the ridiculous, from national foibles to the tragic face of nation existence, from citizen derelictions and delinquencies to government criminalities and betrayals of trust, from the celebration of life and other eulogies to lamentations. Failed projects. Occasional triumphs. They are narratives of the ‘bad, the good, and the ugly’ in encounters high and low. National questions, the quest for genuine federalism, the theocratic menace and the quest for parity in resources, and attachment to identity. The series are intended, basically, ‘for the records’, handy reference pamphlets of what has been said in the past.”