A Date with Toni Kan’s Infidelity
Literary Buffs and friends of Toni Kan’s have been wondering what has become of Kan’s creative stories. Kan, the current editor of The Sun’s Art page is known for Night of the Creaking Bed, his collection of Short Stories, published in 2008. He is also the author of When a dream lingers too long, a poetry collection, and Ballad of rage, a novella, which he got honourable mentions at the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, and Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG literature prize in 2003 and 2004 respectively. He is involved in Infidelity amongst other things at the moment.
Infidelity is Kan’s forthcoming collection of urbane short stories set to be published later this year. Readings of Harbinger and Wasiu Karimu don Hammer, two of the stories of the unpublished collection was organised by the author and Kaine Agary, winner of the NNLG prize for Literature 2009 and author of Yellow Yellow, at Lifehouse,Victoria Island on 0ctober 14. Kan said that infidelity talks about crime, conning, and unfaithfulness.
Harbinger is about a Nigerian military man with the responsibility of informing family members of the demise of their breadwinners fighting at the Liberian peacekeeping front. Although the harbinger keeps to his duty, the story reads “he sleeps with the widows,...who told you...my Dad told my mum, my mum told me. The harbinger truly does use the loopholes of the military structure to feather his sexual nest, as he drives his 504 to the homes of emotionally troubled widows. The Harbinger lies to the wife of a military man who is alive in Liberia and had his way with her, that began the end of such activities. Wasiu Karimu don Hammer is a funny story about the frustration of the average Nigerian who began a life of infidelity with policemen in order to gain financial standing.
see pictures,
Highlights of the event were a room for questions and discussions. One of the issues discussed was the portrayal of negatives and poverty in Nigerian Literature. While some described it as a sort of exoticism that has cast a shadow on the existing hopes, excellence and aspiration of the people, others justified these writings, they said, “it was the duty of writer’s to create out of the existing realities”. Other issues were about the Art, philosophy and influence of Fela on the individuals present, and books that gained the approval and disapproval of Toni Kan, as fela’s song played at the background.
“Infidelity is about being untruthful, not being faithful. It does not necessarily have to do with sex as one may think” Kan told the magazine. He also revealed “ I am also engrossed with writing a novel entitled Lasgidi and its so interesting, I can’t stop writing”.
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