SOURCE: "Pipe Dreams," in London Review of Books, Vol. 18, No. 7, April 4, 1996, pp. 18-19.

Nixon is an English author and educator. In the following review of Saro-Wiwa's detention diary, A Month and a Day, he describes conditions in Nigeria after the encroachment of transnational companies—such as Shell Oil—into developing countries.

Ken Saro-Wiwa squints at us from the cover of his detention diary, the posthumous A Month and a Day. His moustache looks precise and trim; his eyes are alight; the distinctive gash scrawls across his temple. But the picture is governed by his pipe. It's an intellectual's accessory, a good pipe to suck and clench, to spew from and lecture with. He had hoped tobacco would kill him: 'I know that I am a mortuary candidate, but I intend to head for the mortuary with my pipe smoking.' In the end, it was another kind of...