LSi Reviews
Project Award, The Oracle, dedicated to Chinua Achebe
THE DREAMER AND THE ORACLE BY CHIN CE
2013 Project Award of the International Society of Literary Fellows, The Oracle, by Chin Ce, is dedicated to the father of modern African Literature, Chinua Achebe (1930-2013).
Reading
Chin Ce�s early stories in The Dreamer is to enter the romantic idealism of
Full Moon brutally contrasted with the disappointment we find in Millennial.
It is to gaze inside a visionary mind frequently mitigated by limitations in
the attainment of the highest ideals in life.
In The Oracle Ce explores such individual flagellations within far wider dimensions of cosmic interdependency. We are here again confronted with his narrative experimentation in The Visitor which has been called bi-living or multidimensionality of being wherein the artiste is reflecting vast spiritual frequencies of the human soul. It is also an evocation of themes in Gamji College as the religious and political mindlessness which impoverish the African landscape now take on mythological dimensions in these uniquely rivetting tales. The energy and urgency of Ce�s description of the phenomenon of evil and the nightmarish quality imbued the elemental who manipulates the social and religious conditions of our servility are expressed in his usual dialectic and elevated prose. Through these struggles between awareness and ignorance the light upon corrupt constructs of existence is made to shine most glaringly and, perhaps, most timely.
Dedicated to the elder Chinua Achebe who passed away on the year of its
publication, The Oracle honours a shamanistic teacher and story teller who,
as Onku, also embodies the imaginary Nagua, helping to liberate the
protagonists from an insidious mind control by an evil intelligence that
bestrides humanity through several ages of chaos.
Ce�s nascent idealism reveals itself in all these stories. Beyond the battle of good and evil is the notion of our world as a continuum of public and personal realities reflecting options for participants in the drama of life. While the heroes become active challengers of the status quo, the dialogues and dramatic rendering nudge us toward new and less constricting paradigms for redefinition of our place in the universe.