Ken Saro-Wiwa squints at us from the cover of his detention diary, the posthumous A Month and a Day. His moustache looks precise and trim; his eyes are alight; the distinctive gash scrawls across his temple. But the picture is governed by his pipe. It's an intellectual's accessory, a good pipe to suck and clench, to spew from and lecture with. He had hoped tobacco would kill him: 'I know that I am a mortuary candidate, but I intend to head for the mortuary with my pipe smoking.' In the end, it was another kind of pipe that got him, spilling toxins indiscriminately into the land, rivers and lungs of his Ogoni people.

LRB 4 April 1996 | PDF Download