A broken nation: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, by Wole Soyinka, reviewed

One of the best episodes in Wole Soyinka’s third novel (his first since 1973) takes place not in Nigeria but in Salzburg. An engineer-turned-entrepreneur has died in hospital there after a bomb attack back home. His grasping clan descends from Lagos to parade their last respects — and stake their claims. The drive to the cemetery triggers a ‘torrent of eulogies to Austrian horticulture’. In a ‘concerted sibling gush’, plutocratic relatives swoon over the contrast between these clean, green vistas and the choking inferno of Lagos — an urban nightmare aggravated by their own mercenary scams.

Soyinka’s characters often hide behind such ‘straw masks’ of pretentiousness, hypocrisy and fakery. The ghastly good taste of these Alpine obsequies raises his game; after all, ‘the dead are a free-for-all for the world to feast on’. Russian authors spent generations trying to skewer the nation-defining blend of kitsch, snobbery, bad faith and hi-falutin vulgarity they called poshlost.