Looking for Transwonderland

Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria is a 2012 non-fiction memoir and travelogue by Noo Saro-Wiwa. In it Saro-Wiwa travels across Nigeria, re-discovering the country of her birth. The book has been compared to those of many other diasporic writers.

Looking for Transwonderland
AuthorNoo Saro-Wiwa
Cover artistRod Hunt[1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
GenreTravel writing
Set inNigeria
Publication date
2012
ISBN978-1847083319

Plot

The journey is made in the shadow of the death of her father Ken Saro-Wiwa, an environmental activist who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995.[2][3] One of the places that Saro-Wiwa visits is the books eponymous Trans Wonderland - an amusement park created as a Nigerian counter to Disney World.[4] Beyond the poignant frivolity of the amusement park, Saro-Wiwa visits Nigeria's major cities - Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Maiduguri, Port Harcourt. She also describes trips to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Sukur,[5] as well as visiting the National Museum, the restored shrine in Osogbo,[6] and the Slave Relic Museum in Badagry.[7] The book also focuses on everyday details, such as riding okadas.[8] It is also critical of the oil industry.[9]

Reception

Parallels have been drawn between Looking for Transwonderland and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Travellers by Helon Habila,[10] as well as The Atlantic Sound by Caryl Phillips,[11] as well as All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes by Maya Angelou, The Devil that Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna and Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay.[12]

Saro-Wiwa has also described how they are in a vanguard of European writers publishing travelogues on African countries; however other African writers have used the form, including Pẹlu Awofẹsọ.[13] Her approach has also been characterised as a "diasporic travel-writer", whose views are formed by the liminality of their experience as a Nigerian who grew up in England.[14] The book has also been characterised as a work of Afropolitanism.[7]

Recognition

In 2012, the work was featured as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. The same year it was featured by the Financial Times as one of their travel books of the year.[15] In 2017, the book featured on New York Public Library's list "365 Books by Women Authors to Celebrate International Women's Day All Year2.[16]

Translations
  • Italian: In cerca di Transwonderland. Rome: 66thand2nd. 9 July 2015. ISBN 9788896538975.

References
  1. "Rod Hunt / Illustration Portfolios - Detailed Isometric Illustrations and Map Illustration - Looking For Transwonderland - Book Cover Illustration". rodhunt.com. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  2. Birrell, Ian (2012-01-29). "Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa – review". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  3. Hammer, Joshua (2012-11-30). "Travel". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  4. "Book Review: "Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria"". Columbia Magazine. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  5. "Review of Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria : Centre for African Studies (LUCAS)". lucas.leeds.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  6. "War & Peace: A Stranger at Home: An Essay on Noo Saro-Wiwa's Looking for Transwonderland - Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature: Panorama is a British lit journal/press/org revolutionising travel lit/visual art works". panoramajournal.org. 2019-12-21. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  7. Hodapp, James (2020-01-23). Afropolitan Literature as World Literature. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. pp. 167–180. ISBN 978-1-5013-4260-8.
  8. "Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria, By Noo Saro-Wiwa". The Independent. 2012-02-16. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  9. Norridge, Zoe (2012-04-20). "A poisoned past". TLS. Times Literary Supplement (5690): 24–25.
  10. Joshua, Nneoma Uchechukwu (2021-07-15). "I dentity, Afropolitanism and the New African Diaspora: Adichie'S Americanah, Habilah's travellers and Noo Saro Wiwa's looking for Transwonderland". Università Ca' Foscari Venezia. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. Hållén, Nickla S. (2017-01-01). Travel Writing and the Representation of Concurrent Worlds: Caryl Phillips' The Atlantic Sound and Noo Saro–Wiwa's Looking for Transwonderland. Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004347601_004. ISBN 978-90-04-34760-1.
  12. Gagiano, Annie (2019-09-01). "Recovering and recovering from an African past: four women's quest narratives". Journal of Transatlantic Studies. 17 (3): 269–289. doi:10.1057/s42738-019-00025-x. ISSN 1754-1018.
  13. Jones, Rebecca (2014). "'Nigeria is my Playground': Pẹlu Awofẹsọ's Nigerian travel writing". African Research and Documentation. 125: 65–85. doi:10.1017/S0305862X00020665. ISSN 0305-862X.
  14. Cruz-Gutiérrez, Cristina (2016). "(Re)Imagining and (Re)Visiting Homelands in "Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria" by Noo Saro-Wiwa". Atlantis. 38 (2): 141–160. ISSN 0210-6124. JSTOR 26330849.
  15. Zhong, Juan (2023-01-02). "Homecoming, Trauma, and Identity in Noo Saro-Wiwa's Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria". English Studies. 104 (1): 154–172. doi:10.1080/0013838X.2022.2141480. ISSN 0013-838X.
  16. "365 Books by Women Authors to Celebrate International Women's Day All Year". The New York Public Library. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
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