Femi Osofisan

Before he became Africa's first Nobel Prize winner in Literature, a small campus bungalow at the University of Ibadan played an outsized role in the life of a man, Wole Soyinka, his family, his university, and the nation. Here's the story. How do we preserve not just what we remember but the physical markers of such transient memory?

Adapted from the eponymous novel by Nigerian author and poet Femi Osofisan, Cordelia is a romantic period-drama where romance meets politics. This novella starts with a lecturer in a disturbed state about his marriage, which is resulting in an inability to teach his students. One of them later confronts him in his office about his shoddy lecture, and the student in question is accompanied to the lecturer’s office by another student named Cordelia. But little does our lecturer know that Cordelia is about to be at the center of a major riot at the institution.