The Art of the Lonely Wandarer

1) Prominent in [The Art of the Lonely Wanderer] is the journey motif, the desire, if not obsession with leaving one’s homeland in search of a more stabled and prosperous, society. Working with this trope, Gbanabom Hallowell explores the interconnections between geographical space and individual and national identity within the conflicting and paradoxical contexts of staying and leaving, and memory and forgetting. A traumatic society confronting the legacies of its past, the journey is metaphorically one of self-discovery, of retracing the lost pathways, restoring lost values, addressing the causes of the societal malaise, engaging the social uncertainties and political anxieties of the present, and reclaiming the soul of the nation. Ernest Cole, author of ‘Theorizing the Disfigured Body: Mutilation, Amputation, and Disability Culture in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone’ 2) Hallowell creates intense suspense and humour in his poems……a logical progression of thoughts and ideas. His lines are complex, but work efficiently in their originality. Bakar Mansaray, author of ‘A Suitcase Full of Dried Fish and Other Stories’ (SLWS 2015) 3) Gbanabom Hallowell’s [The Art of the Lonely Wanderer] is a masterpiece; elusive and dual: there is the conscious and the subconscious interplay in the persona’s psyche that is dragging me along in this drift…this trance… Philip Yamba Thullah, Njala University, Sierra Leone