- 384 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
This book considers the evolution and characteristics of Nigeria's third-generation literature, which emerged between the late 1980s and the early 1990s and is marked by expressive modes and concerns distinctly different from those of the preceding era.
The creative writing of this period reflects new sensibilities and anxieties about Nigeria's changing fortunes in the post-colonial era. The literature of the third generation is startling in its candidness, irreverence as well as the brutal self-disclosure of its characters, and it is governed by an unusually wide-ranging sweep in narrative techniques. This book examines six key texts of the oeuvre: Maria Ajima's The Web, Okey Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc., Teju Cole's Open City, Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters Street, Lola Shoneyin's The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck. The texts interpret contemporary corruption and other unspeakable social malaise; together, they point to the exciting future of Nigerian literature, which has always been defined by its daring creativity and inventive expressive modes. Even conventional storytelling strategies receive revitalizing energies in these angst-driven narratives.
This book will be of interest to students and researchers of contemporary African literature, Sociology, Gender and women's studies, and post-colonial cultural expression more broadly.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 New Wines and Old and New Bottles: Art and the Pulse of the Nation
- 2 Parable, Metaphor, the Pictorial Frame, Emblem of Moral Decadence: Fiction in Revolt, Washing Dirty Linen in Public (Maria Ajima’s The Web)
- 3 Allegory, Migration, Mock-Epic, and Unspeakable Subjects: The Lure of Glamour, Empire of Material Things (Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc.)
- 4 Allegory, Elegy, Prose, the Labyrinths of Disquietude: Art and the Wellsprings of Discontent (Teju Cole’s Open City)
- 5 Subverted Narrative of Disappointed Expectations: Immigration, Chattel Sex Slavery or Prostitution, Horrors of the Unutterable on the Borderline of Magical Realism (Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters Street)
- 6 Ethnography, Patriarchy (or Male Dominance), Anecdotal Portraiture, and the Unspeakable Subject of Co-Wife Rivalry, or the Dilemma of the Western Educated Woman within Polygyny (Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives)
- 7 Anecdote, Allegory, and the Pictorial Frame II: The Short Story as Forum for Documentary Realism (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck)
- 8 Signing Off/Out: The Politics of Language, Nigerian Literature, Now and in the Future
- Bibliography
- Index