Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Echoes of Frost/Nixon, Nigerian Big Brother & Habila & Abani's new book

Just before Christmas I went with friends to see Frost/Nixon, the play by Peter Morgan, the same guy behind the Oscar nominated film The Queen. It's an interesting play showing the interplay between the young journalist David Frost (played admirably by Michael Sheen who also plays a young Tony Blair in The Queen) and the wily old Richard Nixon who left office in disgrace after the Watergate scandal, and whom Frost manages to get to admit culpability and apologise on tape. After the play we went to dinner at a new restaurant in the West End- Imli which professes to do Indian-style tapas- lots of small, manageable dishes shared with friends- and we quite enjoyed the tasting menu- see here http://www.imli.co.uk/menu_xmas.html
As we ate we reflected on the fact that what led to Nixon's downfall was not necessarily ordering his operatives to break into the Democratic Party headquarters but the subsequent attempt at a cover-up which led to deletion of tapes, falsification of records, etc. So why am I going through all this? Well this morning we woke up to the news that Tony Blair's adviser Lord Levy had been arrested for perverting the course of justice in the cash for peerages scandal which has rumbled on for a while now. In a nutshell, the allegation is that Tony Blair nominated donors to the Labour Party for peerages in exchange for their donations/loans to the party. This is where I hear my Naija brothers and sisters saying "Ehen and so?" Well, it's against the law here and the police have been investigating. I haven't really taken it all very seriously which is why I haven't blogged on it before now, not even when Teflon Tone was interviewed by the police in the run-up to Christmas earning himself the dubious distinction of being the first Prime Minister in recent memory to be interviewed by the police in the course of a criminal enquiry. But this morning I couldn't help reflecting on Frost/Nixon and wondering if it'll be the cover up that might do for Blair.....

Is anyone else bemused by Nigeria's agreement to supply 80 megawatts of energy to Ghana, in addition to taking over Ghana's commitments to Togo and Benin?http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=69350

Now I'm all for African brotherhood and sisterhood, in spite of recent attempts to shake my faith :-) , but honestly why do we persist in an empty big-manism - Perhaps there's a logic to this, so if you know it, please let me know...

On the literary front, I've been meaning to get Chris Abani's novella Becoming Abigail for a while. While I've dallied, he's brought out a new book The Virgin of Flames which is reviewed in the New York Times here
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/books/review/Olsson.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin . Meanwhile Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is nominated for the prestigious National Book Critics' Circle Award in the US http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=finalists and Helon Habila's Measuring Time comes out in the UK tomorrow...

6 comments:

Pilgrimage to Self said...

From what I remember reading, Chris's novel Becoming Abigail was panned by the critics. Buy hey, their taste may not be yours. As for Chimamanda - there seems to be no stopping her. I'm so pleased for her.

Pilgrimage to Self said...
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Pilgrimage to Self said...

I meant to say 'But hey'..

lala said...

I loved Becoming Abigail. It was a little book but spoke voulmes. I will be buying his new book.

Anonymous said...
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uknaija said...

Ms PG, I tried to remove your comment and succeeded but I can't completely delete it- the name persists- sorry. if you know of a way to get it off please let me know