The contents of a tin box - a handful of letters; old journals with marked pages and annotations; school reports; notebook jottings: tax and other levy receipts; minutes of meetings; and programme notes of special events - which belonged to his father, S. A. ("Essay") Soyinka, a school teacher during the colonial period in Nigeria, provide the grist for Isara: A Voyage Around Essay, the second instalment of Wole Soyinka's memoirs - a son's fictionalised "voyage" into the life and times of his father.