THE LAST GOOD BOOK I READ… Olumide Olaniyan (Poet) The Beautification of Area Boy by Wole Soyinka

Poet Olumide Olaniyan’s last good read is Wole Soyinka’s ‘The Beautification of Area Boy’. “It’s a dramatization of everyday issues people are faced with, especially the downtrodden. The way they relate with one another, their daily challenge, its impact and their coping strategies,” he said. “Also, how the poor trudge on as far as they are able to wake early, dash to work or even beg. The change in young people, and how poverty can be transferred from mothers to their daughters, and the danger if you are subsumed in poverty. It was written in everyday language of the characters so that you feel like you are speaking directly with them. Being a satirist and absurdism school poet myself, I see the situation of absurdism that has continued to separate humans based on social construction, power relations and human capacity to improve social construction for the interest of all, despite rules, governance structure and urbanisation. It is a great book, of course, being Soyinka’s. It also shows that a writer can writer successfully in multiple genres.

Olaniyan is the author of a collection of poems titled ‘Lucidity of Absurdity’.