Product Description

Femi Ojo-Ade’s new Novel, The Almond tree, uses the biographical format -the life of an African man- to address the dilemma of colonialism and neo-colonialism, as well as the complex question of nationhood.
The main character grows up in a large family in which he becomes privileged, due to his accidental training in a colonial school. He becomes a civil servant in the white man’s administration. He rolls with the punches inflicted by the racism and ethnic polarization embedded in the colonial system. He starts his own family, with a wife who dies too soon, another woman that becomes his nemesis, and children whom he adores without, however, fully understanding them, or adequately playing the role of father
At the societal level, the country attains independence without freedom, without progress, without becoming a nation. A meaningless civil war breaks out, and the hero’s son is one of its casualties, just as another son travels abroad apparently without looking back. His daughters live to bury him, although they cannot be deemed to lead lives of happiness.
The almond tree is at once a symbol of life, and death. The continuity of resilient culture represented by a closely knit family of survivors. The death of father, mother, and children, like that of the tree, cut down by those obsessed with modernity.

176 pages
Paperback Binding
Amoge Press
Published 2000

ISBN 9789783515840Binding Paperback