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This is the first novel from an academic critic of African literature. It is a chequered account of growing up in post- independence Africa as profiled in the life and times of Kosiya Kifefe. Through Kosiya, the author traverses the years of the African youth with its dreams, uncertainties and escapades, while at the same time projecting the images of a changing society that is rapidly disintegrating. The story is full of political intrigues, facades in high places and lust for power and wealth.
Chinua Achebe’s novels have always been read as texts from an erstwhile colonised African nation, interpreted within the parameters suggested by postcolonial theorists. The confines of postcolonial readings have raised questions about when the ‘postcolonial’ period would end, so that writers would no longer need to ‘write back’ to the empire or ‘rewrite’ their histories. This work explores how Achebe’s novels articulate his knowledge of his own people and the manner in which he participates in the politics of representation. He critiques the postcolonial methodology, and seeks out, recovers and provides an alternative narrative of the postcolonial experience and its aftermath...
This is a timely and comprehensive study combining various critical approaches to the fiction of Buchi Emecheta, one of Africa's most illustrious and contentious women writers. Feminist (Showalter, Cixous, Kristeva) and postcolonial approaches (writing back) are taken to Emecheta's texts to illuminate the personal, political and aesthetic ramifications of the production of this “born writer.” Poststructural programmes of analysis are shown to be less relevant to this writer’s fiction than Marxist and Bakhtinian perspectives. Emecheta is shown to be a bridge-builder between two cultures and two worlds in narratives (both challenging and popular) characterized by ambiguity, ambivalence and double-voiced discourse, all of which evince the writer's determination to expose imaginatively the colonial heritage of centre-periphery conflicts, cultural corruption, ethnic discrimination, gender oppression, and the migrant experience in multiracial communities.
This is a collection of biographical accounts and other writings about Godfrey Mwakikagile, a writer from Tanzania and specialist in African studies. Included are some autobiographical accounts. The work complements his autobiographical writings to provide a broader perspective on him and his contribution to the study of post-colonial Africa.
Grace Ogot is a well-known Kenyan novelist. In this collection of nine stories, she explores themes of social, cultural and spiritual importance. Her imagery is designed to unveil evils which bedevil modern society, such as violence, lust for power and wealth, and family turmoil. Her stories are imbued with the culture of Kenya.
This book examines a range of fiction and criticism as it pertains to colonialism, the North/South engagement and contemporary Third World politics. The Fiction of Imperialism attempts to promote dialogue between international relations and postcolonialism. It addresses the value of fiction to an understanding of the imperial relationship between the West and Asia and Africa. A wide range of fiction and criticism is examined as it pertains to colonialism, in North/South engagement and contemporary Third World politics. The book begins by contrasting the treatment of cross-cultural relations in political studies and literary texts. It then examines the personal as a metaphor for the political...
David Livingstone: The Wayward Vagabond in Africa is an expression of doubt about the raîson d’etre concerning the 19th Century explorers and missionaries in Africa. Led by David Livingstone, the Scottish explorer and missionary, they are said to have come to civilise “backward” Africans, which the author creatively re-imagines, arguing that it is far from the truth. Instead, their actions gave impetus to colonialism proper. In this book the omniscient narrator, Everywhere, is God’s special envoy mandated to witness history with far-reaching consequences for humanity. His investigation is to help nail David Livingstone on Judgment Day, much the same way St Peter chronicles events in...
"A ... story set in Isiakpu, a typical African village, and at the University of Embakassi, a modern African university. It revolves around two Nigerian women, mother and daughter, who struggle to survive in a male chauvinist society where both tradition and modernity confront them with daunting challenges"--
After completing her undergraduate studies Monika Saliku anxiously waits to see what shape her career will take. For her it is a foregone conclusion that she will get an appointment in the city and savour the familiar throb of urban life. However she receives a setback when she is appointed to a bucolic outpost settling for a career she loathes. As she journeys to the small dusty town her struggle to self-realisation has just begun.