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Soyinka, Wole.
The Interpreters.
Publisher: Andre Deutsch, London;
Date of Publication: 1965
Stock Code: 15145
First edition. Octavo, pp., 253, [1]. Publisher’s orange cloth, titled in gilt to spine, in the original unclipped dust-jacket designed by William Belcher. Small, neat former ownership inscription of bibliographer and critic ‘G. S. Ivy’ in blue ink to front free end-paper. Shelf-wear to edges of jacket, closed tear (approx. 2cm) to head of upper panel, fading to red ink only and minor loss to head of spine panel. The slightest of shelf-wear to head of spine, one corner very slightly softened, corners otherwise sharp, cloth and gilt bright, binding strong and square. Contents clean and bright. A near-fine copy in very good jacket. The first edition of the first novel by the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Interpreters follows lives of five friends in Nigeria on the eve of the Biafran war, each one representing a god or goddess from the Yoruba pantheon. The novel draws from Soyinka’s experiences as a political dissident and intellectual. Ben Okri has appraised Soyinka as a ‘survivor in a difficult land’ - ‘no other writer has Soyinka's unique positioning in the political and cultural life of his nation’. A bright copy of the author’s debut novel. £850.00