Letter to the EditorAuthor(s): Sheldon G. Weeks and Edward A. HawleySource: Africa Today, Vol. 29, No. 1, Namibia, South Africa and the West (1st Qtr., 1982), p.80Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4186073 .

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*WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS. J.M. Coetzee. (Penguin Books, 1980) 156 pp.; paperback $3.95.

Education

UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION IN NIGERIA: A Study of Kano State. Mark Bray. (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982) 212 pp.; paperback $12.95.

Letter to the Editor

The Editors, AFRICA TODAY:

Last year after I'd received a copy of Louise Crane's letter I'd sent you a telegram requesting that you note that the title "A Sensitive Novel" was the editor's, not the author's.

I am therefore distressed that her letter was published on page 79 of Vol. 28, No. 3, 1981 without such an acknowledgement.

Could you please print an apology in your next issue. Crane has launched an ad hominem attack against me when the words she is reacting against were not mine. Nowhere in my review did I use the word "sensitive." I do not disagree with Crane's views, but the charges of "ignorant" and "insensitive" are both scurrilous and uncalled for.

Sheldon G. Weeks

Dr. Weeks' point is well-taken. The title was mine, and not his, and the word "sensitive" appeared only in the title. We did receive his telegram, and had intended to comply with his request, but somehow the telegram, which had been attached to the letter to remind us to acknowledge our culpability became detached before we were ready to go to press. Our sincere apologies for allowing the charges of "ignorant" and "insensitive" to be directed at Dr. Weeks when they should have fallen on my shoulders. However, we feel the letter made an important point not emphasized in the review, one, knowing Dr. Weeks, we feel sure he would have made if not operating under the constraints of brevity imposed by our guidelines. Novels by expatriates about expatriates too easily, as this one does, distort or fail to reveal the situation and feelings of the Africans who are at the center of the real life drama within which the novelist's little plot is laid.

Edward A. Hawley Executive Editor

80 AFRICA TODAY

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