Professor Wole Soyinka was quoted saying his latest book is the “nastiest” that he has written so far. InterInventions: Between Defective Memory and the Public Lie- A Personal Odyssey in The Republic of Liars (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2015, 136pp) is quite close to being just that. But who knows if an even nastier book may follow as Soyinka embarks on the task of exposing lies in our Republic as he has promised that InterInventions, a follow up to Interventions series (I-IV) will be dedicated solely to the dismantling of lies in the public space: malicious and non-malicious lies, lies told, lies magnified, lies fraudulent, murderous lies, accidental lies, uttered from depraved minds whose sole intention is to create burdens for their victims, malign, impugn and lower the other so they can be raised or their stomachs can be nourished at other’s expense.
This is nevertheless, a publication in which Professor Soyinka settles strictly personal scores, but this is no pamphleteering that he modestly alludes to, but a fine, extended essay in the distinguished tradition of that form. He is polemical, punchy and critical - without mercy or measure! There is no deceit, no pulling of punches, not much of deliberate concealment; it is Soyinka wielding a Bazooka in one hand, and a gilt-edged knife in the other, shooting down the hypocrisy and pretensions of representative figures in a Republic of Liars, where defective memory, an affliction worse than amnesia, but much closer to dementia, and psychosis, is standard fare. He deploys language dramatically and draws blood even if his mood remains charismatic and entertaining as he laughs at human folly, and the verminous antics of his named and shamed traducers.
