Publications

Strange things happen all over the world. In the Autumn of 1946, Muna Lee, a poet who worked with the United States Department of State, wrote a journal article that questions the integrity of book reviewers. The title of his piece is: "Can't Book Reviewers Be Honest?" In that piece are two gross cases, one of them a confession. The first is the case of a reviewer who did the review of a whole book from the blurb - that is, from the book's short description on the back cover. And, it turned out that even the writer of the blurb had never read what the book contained, and he was too dishonest to say so. The second case is more scandalous. It is the confession made by one literary critic who wrote: "I have to confess that I once reviewed a book without having seen it. The editor was keen to have a review but could not obtain a copy, nor could I, so at last, on the strength of having read a score of books by the same author, I wrote a fairly long review, which apparently gave satisfaction." It was that bad. Both cases are not fiction. They happened some 80 years ago, the first in the United States, the second in Canada.

So, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I want to solemnly affirm that I have read the book I am reviewing here today. I took time to fine-combed it from the front of the cover, the title page, table of contents, the copyright page, the initial chapters that deal with what Omipidan describes as his father's "Undying Love" and his mum's "Unfulfilled Wish." I moved from there and dashed across the labyrinth of the remaining chapters - where the real actions are - then to a motley part he describes as Reflections, and finally to the back of the cover where we have a brief on the author, and the blurb.

Omipidan's 'Persona non Grata' has 31 short chapters with the Foreword written by Farooq Kperogi, the author's immediate boss when he had his very first journalism experience at the Weekly Trust newspaper some 25 years ago. A foreword is a short introduction to a book. But what the book has from Kperogi is more than a short introduction. I see it as a thorough review of not just the book, but an authoritative X-Ray of the author. And it is a positive testimony and testimonial to the person we've come to know today as Ismail Omipidan.