Awoonor'S This Earthy My Brother. A Personal Memoir

This Earth, My Brother (1971)' can be described as a dramatized autobiography. We can also assume from the narrative itself that the world of the novel is, for the author, decadent. Awoonor's indignation at the 'moral decay of the nation' (p. 116/ is unmistakable in the closely-knit, densely allusive method of the novel. But this essay is not concerned with the details of the novel's autobiographical feature or social criticism perse. Aesthetically Amamu, for instance, has to be seen, if only for his narrative role as a protagonist-narrator, not as 'homo sapiens' but as 'homo fictus' whose principal function is to complete a structural or verbal pattern. It is possible to say that Awoonor is in this novel as man and artist concerned to master his personal emotions, allow the artist to be stronger than the man, and create a critical distance between author and fictional character. Hence, this essay is solely concerned with This Earth, My Brother as an artistic creation, a structural or verbal pattern, which is far more than a subjective dramatization, or even a satiric exposition.