Harry Garuba's Shadow and Dream, a slim yet highly influential collection which immediately gained a cult following, has continued to elicit the awe of poets and lovers of literature within the Nigerian literary scene. First published in 1982 when Garuba was still in his early twenties, it demonstrates an uncommon maturity, vision and understated confidence that have rarely been encountered ever since its initial release. With the publication of this edition together with a new foreword and introduction, Garuba's landmark work moves from cult status to canonical validation.
"I try to think what Harry would have thought when I face difficult local/global questions. He is alive in my work", Professor Gayatri C. Spivak, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
"Shadow and Dream's subtlety, equanimous undertones and delicate but unfailing charm lent a profound sense of poetic liberation to an entire generation of poets", Sanya Osha, HUMA, University of Cape Town
"Shadow and Dream may be inspired by Harry Garuba's personal journeys but his poetry creates multiple sites, possibilities, imaginative provocations, and aesthetic beauty beyond words", Professor Noëleen Murray, Research Chair in Critical Architecture and Urbanism, University of Pretoria
"In this book, existence and imagination are necessarily stripped down to nakedness. The poems here are true to mutability. The personal and the communal find places within the energized and aestheticized perspectives of their range. From that day in 1988 in Ibadan when I first encountered Harry Garuba's Shadow and Dream, to this day, my enthusiasm for it has not diminished. I've had a long and ongoing fascination with the work of this dialogic poet. I celebrate the republication of this delightful and relevant volume of poems." Uche Nduka (author of SCISSORWORK), Eugene Lang New School & City University New York City
Born in 1958 in Akure, Nigeria, Harry O. Garuba, poet, literary critic, and distinguished professor, was the nominal leader the Thursday Group, an influential gathering of poets that emerged from the Poetry Club, University of Ibadan, during the 1980s and 1990s. The poets, who were also fondly called the Thursday People, imposed stringent standards upon themselves in mastering their craft. Garuba and the rest of the group believed that poetry as an art form was meant to be lived and experienced in its entire range even if it entailed transcending the boundaries of sensibility, convention and nationality. Garuba eventually became a respected professor of literature and Africa studies at the University of Cape Town in South Africa where he passed in 2020.
