Recovering Letters, Discovering Numbers

Book excerpt: The essays in this collection are attempts to arrive at a few new truths about writers and their writings based on novel evidence that has been either found by chance or subjected to unusual forms of analysis. The lucky finds include letters by Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott and Sarah Gertrude Millin. Among the texts examined are Julius Nyerere's Kiswahili translation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, some love poems by Dennis Brutus, and a novel and film by Sembene Ousmane. In addition there are several statistical studies that reveal salient patterns in the criticism of anglophone African literature and in the teaching of that literature in South African university English departments. The brain drain of African writers and scholars is also discussed.