In a dozen essays, scholars of literature from Africa and North America explore the literary and political efforts of Saro-Wiwa (1941-95) who was executed by the Nigerian government during his fight to prevent the further exploitation of his Ogoni people by the Shell Oil Company. They begin with overviews of the political and economic situation, his place in it, and the practice of genocide in Nigeria. Then they look at the literary experiments, the public man, popular media, and seven poems. Appended are chronologies of his life and the Nigerian civil war, and an annotated bibliography.