Before the New Earth: African Short Stories

His second book is a collection of short stories entitled Before the New Earth: African Short Stories published in 1988.

Before the New Earth, which was also published in Calcutta, India, is a collection of 16 short stories (including a Letter from Wole Soyinka to the author) and consists of 93 pages. The author is raising his voice against the North-South inequalities and its consequences on Africa. He is dreaming of a New Earth with New Human Values. “Sallah attempts to create a panorama of mistreatment and resistance. The first word in the title is important. The tales seek to show the urgency of the need for rebirth, the many reasons why this society must change.” Samual Baity Gordon.

Tijan Sallah’s second book, Before the New Earth, was reviewed by Ezenwa Ohaeto on page 8 of The African Guardian of May 22, 1986. In this review, some of the stories are explained in depth. Ezenwa reveals that there are not only stories in the book but two poems are included. “...perhaps to justify the fact that poetic prose enhances the art of a writer if he is conscious of the limitations of dense poetic language.” According to Ezenwa, what immerges in the stories is an optimistic view of society. To conclude his review, he wrote “Before the New Earth utilises interesting literary devices to explore the human condition in Africa. However the tendency to sermonise and the seeming thinness of plots make the stories read like essays.”

Strange as it may seem, Sallah notes, exile, involontary or self-imposed, heightens one’s sensibility to one’s homeland, to the familiar, to things that one takes for granted; a minor encounter about one’s homeland echoes deep reverberations and sends one into a chain of endless self-questionings.