Shattered Calabash

This play depicts a neo-colonial regime that expropriates the wealth of the country into private bank accounts in Europe, with the blatant cooperation of western commercial interests. The drama is at once personal and political: the wife of a well-placedand corrupt husband discovers his actions of embezzlement and gradually reveals her knowledge and proof. The play shifts in and out of didactic mode, employing humour and satire as a means of expressing social criticism.

Tunde Fatunde is a Nigerian playwright and Professor of Foreign Languages. His works have been greeted with controversy and enthusiasm in Nigeria, and he has an established reputation amongst scholars of African literature. He is a member of the so-called 'third generation' of playwrights following on from the work of Soyinka, J.P. Clark-Bekederemo and Femi Osofisan.

Fatunde has committed to publishing his work locally in Africa, which has perhaps led him to be less well known outside the continent than his reputation would justify. This translation of Shattered Calabash seeks to make the play widely available outside Africa for the first time. First performed in 1999 and published in French in Nigeria in 2002, this play set out to transgress the barrier between African literature written in French and in English. Its translation by a Mosotho scholar and publication in Lesotho is an effort to turn the play into a continent-wide event.