Reflections & Retrospectives
from EDITORIAL ARTICLE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
Summary
POSTAL SERVICES ALL OVER THE WORLD are adept at selecting with uncanny acuity all kinds of iconic images, iconic moments, iconic significations for their mailing stamps. Those, sometimes cryptic, patriotic representations endure as part of either national imaginaries, or indelible and ineluctable and incandescent representations of the consciousness of the people. The words which follow from Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah, down the unfurling road of world history, will echo and speak on to all hearts like one of those innumerable and collectible special stamps as long as the tradition of storytelling, in all forms remain with human societies…
So why do I say that the story is chief among his fellows? The same reason I think that our people sometimes will give the name Nkolika to their daughters. Recalling-Is-Greatest. Why? Because it is only the story that can continue beyond the war and the warrior. It is the story that outlives the sound of war drums and the exploits of brave fighters. It is the story, not the others, that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind.
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- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012