First published in 1977, this is an eminently readable introduction to contemporary literature in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. The author examines work in verse, prose and drama, and discusses vernacular language problems, the role of oral literature and tradition and the varied responses to the struggle for freedom and its achievement. He argues that African literature is achieving its own inner dynamic, revealing a rapid spread of influences from one side of the continent to the other and a decrease in influences from the Western world. Part of his argument is based on a discussion of authors not yet known outside East and Central Africa, but whose works shows signs of great promise and originality. Dr Roscoe has close personal knowledge of many of the authors he discusses, as he has worked in East and Central African universities throughout the period of the literary awakening he discusses.

This reference book surveys the richness of postcolonial African literature. The volume begins with an introductory essay on postcolonial criticism and African writing, then presents alphabetically arranged profiles of some 60 writers, including Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Doris Lessing, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Tahbar Ben Jelloun, among others. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes that appear in the author's writings, an overview of the critical response to the author's work, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. These profiles are written by expert contributors and reflect many different perspectives. The volume concludes with a selected general bibliography of the most important critical works on postcolonial African literature.

The focus of this book is upon the changing perception of women in African society and their portrayal over different periods in the novels of Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o; the writers who intriguingly wrote on the constant changing role of African women in Igbo and Gikuyu clans. The book dicusses the image of African women entrapped in double jeopardy in both traditional and modern Africa. There has been a remarkable transformation in the representation of women from the early novels to the later novels of both the writers that has been studied in this book from close quarters. The approach and technique of the novelists in projecting their female characters has also been analyzed. The novels of both the writers marked a sea change in the thinking and perception of Westerners with reference to Africa and its people. This work is devoted to the exploration of the image of women in the East and West African societies through the selected novels of Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book contains over 600 entries that cover criticism and theory, its development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers.

This book provides a meticulous examination of the work of playwright Robert Serumaga and the Golden Age of Uganda’s theatre (1968-1978). It considers the question of individualism—or its extreme form, solipsism—on the one hand, and activism or a social conscience on the other. Theatrical innovation is another key concern. It deconstructs the ruling histories, historiography and performance analysis of the time as irremediably tainted by a ferocious post-independence nation-statism. This is a study of a theatre of commitment, dissidence, resistance, resilience, struggle, signification and survival; a theatre born under the unrelenting glare of severe, scorching censorship, and incarceration. For the very first time, Serumaga’s work is examined in its entirety and afforded the room, complexity and scope it requires and deserves. For the very first time, too, scholars of the Golden Age of Uganda’s theatre will have to make no more than a single stop in their search for what were hitherto scattered tidbits and sources of Uganda’s theatre history.

The life and works of South African writer, political activist and artist, from his early life in District Six, his arrest and trial for treason, to his eventual reluctant exile in Cuba.

African literatures, says volume editor Oyekan Owomoyela, "testify to the great and continuing impact of the colonizing project on the African universe." African writers must struggle constantly to define for themselves and other just what "Africa" is and who they are in a continent constructed as a geographic and cultural entity largely by Europeans. This study reflects the legacy of colonialism by devoting nine of its thirteen chapters to literature in "Europhone" languages—English, French, and Portuguese. Foremost among the Anglophone writers discussed are Nigerians Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, and Wole Soyinka. Writers from East Africa are also represented, as are those from South Africa. Contributors for this section include Jonathan A. Peters, Arlene A. Elder, John F. Povey, Thomas Knipp, and J. Ndukaku Amankulor. In African Francophone literature, we see both writers inspired by the French assimilationist system and those influenced by Negritude, the African-culture affirmation movement. Contributors here include Servanne Woodward, Edris Makward, and Alain Ricard. African literature in Portuguese, reflecting the nature of one of the most oppressive colonizing projects in Africa, is treated by Russell G. Hamilton. Robert Cancel discusses African-language literatures, while Oyekan Owomoyela treats the question of the language of African literatures. Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido focus on the special problems of African women writers, while Hans M. Zell deals with the broader issues of publishing—censorship, resources, and organization.

Professor Darah turned seventy on Wednesday November 22, 2017 and to celebrate his very productive career, his colleagues and many of those he has mentored thought it appropriate to mark his official exit from the university in a dignified way by commissioning for publication, in the now acceptable festschrift tradition, the highly compelling and outstanding collection of essays titled: Scholarship and Commitment: Essays in Honour of G.G. Darah. The book is a ground-breaking collection of essays; some are couched as tributes to the ebullient celebrant, there are others on more serious discourses in the areas of literary theories and criticism, language and linguistics, popular literature and politics, the African woman, identity and contemporary realities, oral literature, the news media and cultural studies. The essays, on their own, attest to the vivacity and liveliness as well as the encouraging state of health of publishing in the Nigerian academia, which in this collection alone, parades forty-two essays in different fields or discourses.