A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary [B2227]

1995 PB with minor wear. From the back cover: "In May 1994, Ken Saro-Wiwa, together with eight others, was arrested in Nigeria for the murder of four men who had been killed during a riot following a political rally. Though there was overwhelming evidence of his innocence, Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned for eighteen months. He and his co-defendants were eventually found guilty in a show trial and sentenced to be hanged. Despite massive international publicity and outcries against the mockery of justice these acts represented, on November 10, 1995, the executions were carried out.

A Month & A Day is the moving last memoir of the man who gave voice to the campaign for the basic rights of the Ogoni people of Nigeria. Saro-Wiwa was an outspoken critic of the despotic Nigerian military regime and of the international oil companies, notably Shell, which he held responsible for the destruction of his homeland. Yet, despite the brutal government campaign against the Ogoni, he always advocated peaceful and non-violent protest.

This book is framed by Saro-Wiwa's account of an earlier effort to silence him, when he was arrested in mid-1993. He lays out both the experience of detention and the story of his involvement with the Ogoni cause. He was eventually released as a result of intense international pressure, only to be arrested again the next year, shortly after finishing this book; he remained in prison until his death."

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "There is an eerie composure to Saro-Wiwa's writing: a refusal to indulge in any sense of melodrama or arguably deserved self-pity. This compendium of a novel-part prison memoir, part political agenda, part indictment of state-sanctioned neocolonial violence-paints a damning portrait of a contemporary Nigeria entirely beholden to foreign capital, and entirely negligent of the blatant suffering, loss and indeed ecological genocide of the endangered Ogoni people."; "This work felt a bit disorganized compared to his other books, and Saro-Wiwa jumps around chronologically quite a lot in here. Still, I felt like I got to know the author much better through reading this book."; "Reading this, it's very difficult to feel anything but deep respect for a man who gives up financial comfort and essentially his family, for a cause he believes in. On a personal level as well, Saro-Wiwa certainly could have been bitter but he often comes across as self effacing and well aware of the absurdity of his detainment."; "R.I.P. Ken Saro-Wiwa. Great book of his last days."