TITLE: A Day Without Cockcrow and Other Stories
AUTHOR: Labo Yari
PUBLISHER: Informart, Kaduna
YEAR: 1999
PAGES: 108
BLURB: In a style uniquely his own, Labo Yari has compiled his best stories into this collection that depicts the life-styles of rural northern Nigeria. In A Day Without Cockcrow & Other Stories, the master story-teller recaptures the powerful ethos that have distinguished his Hausa people across time, reflecting the moods and actions of tyrannical rulers, bewildered commoners and a rustic society coming to grips with new times just as it makes a bid to free itself from the clutches of a backward yet value-studded past.
THE AUTHOR: Born in Katsina in 1942, Labo Yari was educated at the London School of Journalism and the University of Oslo, Norway. He worked in the former Katsina Native Authority, the Federal Ministry of Information, Lagos, and then became the Press Attache in the Nigerian Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden. Subsequently, he held executive positions in publishing, including Chairman/Chief Executive of the Northern Nigerian Publishing Company, Zaria. Since 1989 he has been the Director of the Government Printer, Katsina. For almost two decades, Yari has been one of the four National Trustees of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).
Just as A House in the Dark, his other collection of stories, showed, Labo Yari’s A Day Without Cockcrow is an arching statement of a man determined to retain his post as one of the leading voices on the African literary scene.
– New Nigerian Weekly
