Tropical &Topical

A MAN OF THE PEOPLE by Chinua Achebe. 167 pages. John Day. $3.95.

Early in the muzzy Nigerian August, one military junta took power from another in yet another coup that by now has become more commonplace in Africa than the tsetse fly. Whatever it is in the African climate or mentality or its shaky institutions that makes so many governments so susceptible to disintegration may never be very clearly understood. Perhaps there are some clues to be found in a novel source--a novel, that is, by Chinua Achebe.

In A Man of the People, Achebe, a 35-year-old Lagos broadcasting official who is Nigeria's foremost writer, illuminates today's confused events along the opaque waters of the Niger. Life imitates art, but seldom so promptly on cue. Achebe's book sounds the obituary drums for "the fat-dripping, gummy, eat-and-let-eat regime" that history has extinguished, and makes clear why his still unstable nation should turn to military government. In fact, his novel ends with just such a military coup, the first of many, it seems.

Cringe Benefits. Achebe tells his story through the mouth of Odili Samalu, a sprightly rapscallion--part idealist, part young man on the make--whom it would be tempting to call a colored Candide, except that Odili has no innocence at all, only a naivete that makes a farce both of his convictions and his ambition. He is, in fact, perhaps the most engaging character in fiction about Africa since the hero of Joyce Gary's Mister Johnson, who was factotum to a white colonial official.

Odili, whose father was such a one, remembers the "days when the District Officer was like the Supreme Deity and the Interpreter the principal minor god who carried prayers and sacrifices to Him." The pay and cringe benefits were enough to support Odili, 34 other children and five wives in high style, with a goat killed every week, and lashings of palm wine to wash down the yams. But times change. The white man has gone, and Odili must emerge with his emergent nation and attach himself to black power in the person of a cynical grafter named Chief Nanga. So begins a comedy of Freedom Now.

Cultural Struggle. With his B.A. from the University, Odili is a potentially valuable proteege of Chief Nanga who is really most at home in pidgin. As a student, Odili had disapproved of Chief Nanga for his demagoguery and his "ignorance," but it is hard for a young schoolteacher to feel superior to his old school-and-scoutmaster now that the wily old charmer has a house with seven bathrooms and an official Cadillac with chauffeur.

In the capital, he learns that the chiefs pidgin-speaking "bush wife," who had once appeared to Odili as "the acme of sophistication" in a white sun helmet, is now seen as a hopeless hick who can't get the hang of English or even much pidgin and is unable to make the cultural struggle into a girdle. She is about to be supplemented by a "parlor wife." Odili, a man of many resources, wants this luscious literate for himself, despite the "bride price" being negotiated for her back home in the village by his patron, the gallant and ever-jovial Chief Nanga. Meanwhile, he attends cultural events, not the least of which is a night of instant integration with the wife of a U.S. information officer.

A Ton of Journalism. Later he joins a reform party to put Chief Nanga and his grafters out of office. It ends in debacle. Odili is beaten nearly to death by the chiefs forthright constituents, and it is back to the village for him. But all is well. A military coup deposes Nanga's gang, and, with a more or less good conscience, the convalescent Odili is able to pay the "bride price" for the now redundant "parlor wife." He does it from party funds.

No American Negro writer has approached the comic posture that Chinua Achebe has achieved toward his own people. His book is worth a ton of documentary journalism. Indeed, he has shown that a mind that observes clearly but feels deeply enough to afford laughter may be more wise than all the politicians and journalists.

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