Emmanuel Bane's Fond Recollections. A choice assortment of little gems fit for prescribed set book and leisure reading!

As the golden nectar and other fire waters take over our faculties, inhibitions also recede. Soon we are overcome by nostalgia for the times when we thought   we would be forever young, and the fun would never end. As the night  wears on  we  abandon vernacular  and spice up slurred conversations  with English, the choice language of literate Africans who’ve had a few too many.  Invariably someone would recite a passage from a  literature set book and all would follow suit trying to relive  characters  who have accompanied  us  since  the first time we  fell  in love  with  the written  word.  In my circle of friends, we tend to coalesce around material from a certain era.

These were prescribed set books for those who started school in the late seventies until the early nineties when the state trucked us off to national service in exchange for free tertiary education. It is those set books that determined the trajectory of our lives, in terms of  disciplines for further study and  professional career choices. Because everyone applying to varsity had to demonstrate proficiency in the English language, even those who ended up in the sciences had to read  some literature.