T. M ALUKO

TM Aluko is established as one of the outstanding all-time great Nigerian and African novelists. His string of novels impressed and dazzled the literary world.       
       

He was born in 1918 in western Nigeria ("Yorubaland") and was educated in Nigeria and Europe (England). He began writing polished short stories abroad, and later on his career as a novelist took off. 

He started with the novel, One Man, One Wife - where modern (western) religion clashes with the mores of a rural community. His next novel, One Man One Matchet, focused on an inexperienced district officer conflated with a crafty, cunning local politician.  

Other superb novels would follow - Kinsman and Foreman; Chief The Honourable Minister, His Worshipful Majesty, Wrong Ones in the Dock, and A State of Our Own. 

Aluko would be praised, and continues to be praised for the dignity, grace, irony that pervade his creative works. A lot of critical attention has been paid to his works, and studies have been published celebrating him and his work.     
 

Aluko's books are read not only in libraries across all of Africa, but also at literary centres and universities in Europe and Africa. He almost always springs to mind when there is any discussion of Africa's top novelists.      

Aluko, during his lifetime, excelled in public service and academia. He was a civil engineer and a town planner by profession and he held key positions like director of public works for government departments. He was also faculty member at the University of Lagos.         

Later on in his life, T M Aluko, already a literary legend, wrote about his own life. His first personal autobiography published was My Years of Service (1994)

He would later on add another autobiography, The Story of My Life (2006). He died on May 1, 2010, acknowledged by then as a venerated, elderly literary genius. 
- Henry Ozogula     

 

Studies:

Nigeria's first novelists  By Bernth Lindfors by Bernth Lindfors

T.M. Aluko as a social critic by S. A Dzeagu

The place of the individual in the novels of Chinua Achebe, T.M.
Aluko, Flora Nwapa and Wole Soyinka by Joseph Asanbe