Hanged by the Nigerian government on November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa became a martyr for the Ogoni people and human rights activists, and a symbol of modern Africans’ struggle against military dictatorship, corporate power, and environmental exploitation. Though he is rightly known for his human rights and environmental activism, he wore many hats: writer, television producer, businessman, and civil servant, among others. While the book sheds light on his many legacies, it is above all about Saro-Wiwa the man, not just Saro-Wiwa the symbol.

Roy Doron and Toyin Falola portray a man who not only was formed by the complex forces of ethnicity, race, class, and politics in Nigeria, but who drove change in those same processes. Like others in the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series, Ken Saro-Wiwa is written to be accessible to the casual reader and student, yet indispensable to scholars.

Roy Doron is an associate professor of history at Winston-Salem State University, where he examines the intersection of war, ethnicity, and identity formation in postcolonial Africa, focusing on the Nigerian Civil War. His work has appeared in the Journal of Genocide Studies and African Economic History, and he is the founding managing editor of the Journal of African Military History.

Toyin Falola is president of the African Studies Association and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of A History of Nigeria and many other books, and holds several honorary doctorates.