The Interpreters. by SOYINKA, Wole - 1965

London: Andre Deutsch,, 1965. His debut novel, signed First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the title page. The novel was published the year before the outbreak of the Nigerian civil war, which saw Soyinka - an outspoken dissident - imprisoned for two years and which led to his exile from the country in 1971. He became the first African recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. This is the first of only three novels by Soyinka, a writer primarily known as a playwright and essayist. In an interview in 2019, he outlined his divergent interests in novels and plays: "What the novel does for me as a medium of expression is to assuage the masochist in me, because the novel is very taxing - taxing in the sense that it's tempting to go in so many directions. Theatre, for me, is more focussed. When you're a narrator, you're juggling a number of characters, and they insist on wandering very willfully in directions which you did not preview, you know?". Octavo. Original orange boards, spine lettered and ruled in gilt. With dust jacket. Spine ends bumped, top edge slightly dusty, contemporary newspaper clipping taped to front free endpaper, contents clean; unclipped jacket rubbed, extremities lightly worn, light damp stains to verso: a very good copy in very good jacket. Vinson Cunningham, "The Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka Discusses his First Novel in Nearly Fifty Years", New Yorker, 2 November 2021.