Biyi Bandele, The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams

Thomas Martinek (Universitat Wien)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.2.3: Anglophone African Writing and Culture: Subsaharan.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1991

Places

Nigeria (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

‘Biyi Bandele’s second novel, The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams, was first published by Bellew Publishing in 1991, shortly after the author’s emigration from Nigeria to the United Kingdom. Two years later, the work was also issued in Heinemann’s African Writer Series.

The Sympathetic Undertaker provides a vivid, high-powered and multi-facetted portrayal of the young Nigerian protagonist Rayo struggling to come to terms with the fierce political and social realities of his country in the late 1980s. Events are related by the intrusive first-person narrator Kayo, the protagonist’s older brother. Both in their early twenties, the two young men live in the city of Kafanchan in the Hausa …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1501 words

Citation: Martinek, Thomas. "The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 October 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=19397, accessed 25 November 2024.]

Save this article