'Ayo' is a demobilised WW2 soldier of the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF) who returns home to a broken family. He is believed to have died at war; by tradition, he must be cleansed before he can fit into mainstream society again. His life is bedevilled by a succession of misfortunes and turns into a living nightmare, not made any easier by his suffering from trauma. Finding life among his people unbearable, he goes on self-exile to another village in the hope of a new start. Things do not go as he had expected when he meets Nyarong - a ruthless medicine-man with an attractive daughter, and Moka - an ambitious school head teacher. These men exert a profound influence on their society, and are at the centre of a sub-plot with tragic overtones. Many years on, new circumstances push 'Ayo' to go on the offensive and, with support from his war veteran comrades, he battles in and out of court to reassert himself. Set in pre-independence West Africa, TRADED FOR A TRIFLE is the story of an ex-serviceman of the RWAFF for whom the end of WW2 is only the beginning of the battles he would fight to survive an uneasy peace. Coming a few years after Biyi Bandele's 'Burma Boy', 'Traded for a Trifle' is one of rare tributes to hundreds of thousands of 'forgotten' African soldiers of the British Empire who fought bravely in North Africa and the inhospitable jungles of Burma, contributing to the success of the Allies in WW2.
About the Author: Gwandi earned a double major in French and English, and an MA in Applied Linguistics (TESL) at the University of Buea, Cameroon. He did postgraduate teacher training in Modern Foreign Languages at the universities of Yaounde I, Newcastle upon Tyne (for German Extension) and Leicester, attaining Qualified Teacher's Status for England and Wales. He has taught ESL and French at college and university levels since 1996. TRADED FOR A TRIFLE can be ascribed to fiction that is grounded on history. The novel was born of the realisation that African novels in English treating the subject of WW1 and WW2 are scarce, creating information void, and leading to a poor appreciation by the present generation of the contribution that West Africans made towards the triumph of what became known as the 'Free World'. John A. L. Hamilton's War Bush: 81 (West African) Division in Burma 1943-1945 attempted to fill this void, giving African soldiers their dignity. But Hamilton's book is pure history. One of its kind, Biyi Bandele's 'Burma Boy' does more literary justice to the bravery of Africans on the battle frontlines of WW2. Gwandi has attempted in 'Traded for a Trifle' to bring out some of the challenges that ex-servicemen of the Royal West African Frontier Force emanating from the Cameroons, Nigeria, the Gold Coast among other pre-independence nations faced immediately after WW2. It is a long-awaited tribute to those WW2 veterans, whose bravery in the battlefields and post-war agitations precipitated the process of decolonisation.