Nigeria, Aug. 24 -- Published in 2019, Banana Man is the last novel of Okello Oculi, the Ugandan literary scholar who spent most of his life in Nigeria and passed away on 26th July. He gave me a copy of the book when we met, sadly, for the last time in Abuja in December 2024. He, surely, didn't expect me to simply adorn my bookshelf with it. He wanted me to read it and expose its ideas to a wide readership. I try to do this in this review.

Banana Man is a penetrating literary critique of the oppression of African people during colonial rule. It interrogates the denigration of African customs and the failure of modernisation to deliver development and freedom. In its simple but brutally effective message, the colonial encounter did not on...