the life of a prostitute by Isaac B. Thomas, was published in 1929 as a serialised novel in 30 installments in a Lagos newspaper. The realistic book, which reports many details about Lagos in the 1920s, reflects the various language influences and the peculiarities of oral urban speech. In the new editions published as books, the style was "literarised". This was followed by The Forest of a Thousand Daemons (1938) by Daniel Olorumfemi Fagunwa. This magical folkloric adventure novel, full of turgid rhetoric and featuring the main character of the legendary Yoruba hunter Àkàrà-Oògùn, is considered the first substantial book in Yoruba. It has been reprinted many times and was translated into English by Wole Soyinka in 1968. In his five novels in all, two of which deal with pre-colonial society and the others with colonial influences on Yoruba society, both traditional Yoruba values and Christian values are upheld. In his dramas, he uses the alienating self-imagination of the character, emphasising the genealogical anchoring of his characters. Duro Ladipo, son of an Anglican clergyman, was a playwright who wrote exclusively in Yoruba and adapted ancient myths, fairy tales and stories from Christian, Islamic or Yorubian traditions in his plays, in which he himself acted. Another important playwright of the Yoruba folk theatre (the Yoruba Opera) was Hubert Ogunde, who also wrote these plays, which were always linked with music, in English. The politician Afolabi Olabimtan also wrote novels in Yoruba. A special role in the discovery and promotion of Yoruba literature was played by Oyekan Owomoyela, who taught in the USA and edited anthologies of trickster tales and proverbs. Nigerian literature in the Igbo language The Igbo have made a rather minor contribution to Nigerian literature. The first short novel in Igbo was written by Pita (Peter) Nwana in 1933 (Omenuko, 1935). It is a historical narrative about a poor boy who rises to become a wealthy trader and paramount chief, but sells his apprentices as slaves to compensate himself for losses of goods suffered, and still becomes impoverished. Initially, efforts to promote literature in Igbo remained largely unsuccessful for a long time, especially since Chinua Achebe achieved his major book success in English with Things Fall Apart in 1958. Achebe also refused to use standard Igbo. It was not until the 1970s that some novelists emerged, such as Tony Ubesie, who died young in 1993. Nigerian literature in the