Book excerpt: The Old Man in a State House and Other Stories is a literary canvas which captures the restless matrix that is today's Africa: the corruptive influence of a corrosive oil economy, environmental degradation, wealth and hubris, love and more. Tanure Ojaide has published sixteen collections of poetry, a memoir, three novels, two short story collections and scholarly works. He has numerous literary prizes and is currently the Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.