Nigeria, March 13 -- Apart from being a strategy against defective memory, diary-keeping is an extraordinary tool in literary craftsmanship. One, it infuses writing with greater realism or a deeper breath of reality, if you like. In English literature of the early twentieth century, the technique was popularised by writers like Bruce Cummings, who adopted the pen name, Nero Barbellion, and his major work is entitled, The Journal of a Disappointed Man.

As the title suggests, The Journal of a Disappointed Man is a bitter-sweet account of a provincial young man who arrives London to start a career in science, then he becomes disillusioned, and begins to stumble from one unhappy love affair to another. His emotional misery is soon compounded...