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Madmen and specialists

Archive Print Item: Banham Collection

Details

Type of record: Book

Title: Madmen and specialists

Level: Item

Classmark: Banham Collection

Creator(s): Soyinka, Wole

Publisher: Methuen

Publication city: London

Date(s): 1971

Language: English

Size and medium: 77 pages

Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/655090

Printed items catalogue: https://leeds.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?vid=44LEE_INST:VU1&docid=alma991003254469705181

Description

Madmen and Specialists is a play by Wole Soyinka, conceived in 1970 during his imprisonment in the Nigerian Civil War. The play, Soyinka's eighth, has close links to the Theatre of the Absurd. Abiola Irele (in the Lagos Sunday Times) called it "a nightmarish image of our collective life as it appears to a detached and reflective consciousness". Madmen and Specialists is considered Soyinka's most pessimistic play, dealing with "man's inhumanity and pervasive corruption in structures of power". The plot concerns Dr. Bero, a corrupt specialist, who imprisons and torments his physician father.

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