num_pages: 223
description: In this collection of poetry, his third, the poet challenges himself as well as his audience. The Sahara mosaic stands unique for sheer range and scope - from prehistory to the present. Discipline, sophistication and stamina are counterpointed by deep, eclectic wordplay and the entire work is lit by lyric allusiveness and ebullience."The Sahara Testaments is remarkable in its blending of elements from two traditions of the epic - the broad sweep of the narrative and the intellectual rigour of the philosophical with the haunting immediacy of the personal lyric. The audacity of Tade Ipadeola's ambitions spills over the boundaries of his central trope, the Sahara desert, to encompass nothing less than an entire continent. Cities and antions, flora and fauna, the common folk and famous figures, the historical and the contemporary, geographical features and human movements, a diversity of joys and pains are carried along in the flow of the work's majestic verse. Because Ipadeola's poetic art cultivates the fine detail, each of the quatrains constituting this tour de force is a miniature feat. Collectively, the thousand and one quatrains stun like an astonishment of flowers sprouting from the desert sands." - ROTIMI BABATUNDE, Caine Prize Winner."...literary accomplishment that posterity may use as a reference point..." - JUMOKE VERISSIMO, Author, I Am Memory."...avec admiration..." - CLAUDE MOUCHARD, Professor, Paris 8 University.
language: English
title: The Sahara Testaments
publisher: Scribes Lane