The Dance of Death: Nigerian History and Christopher Okigbo's Poetry. (Book Reviews).

The Dance of Death: Nigerian History and Christopher Okigbo's Poetry, by Dubem Okafor. Trenton: Africa World P, 1998. xv + 297 pp. ISBN 0-86543-555-3.

The genesis of The Dance of Death is Dubem Okafor's doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota (ix). Okafor describes his book as "a traditional narratological typology [...] which will quickly scan the cultural political history of Nigeria from the colonial period to 1996, and attempt to provide an explanatory backdrop for subsequent events" (3). The Dance of Death has a remarkably extensive breadth, going back to the slave trade. Its main focus, however, is on Nigeria's colonial history, her formidable "twin bane of ethnicity and corruption" (25) and "linguistic cacophony" (18), all of which, Okafor argues, create a dance of death that prevents her transformation from "ties of primordalism" to a nation (7). Okafor situates within all this sociopolitical scenario Christopher Okigbo, his uncle, as the man and the poet. And he draws on relevant, recent critical theory to illuminate his viewpoints.

The Dance of Death's historical documentation is in itself impressively refreshing. But the author's strategic act of…