Narrating the Struggle,Theorizing the Genre: The Convergence of Narrative and Literary-Critical Theory in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah (1987)

Abstract

This article explores Achebe’s insertion of literary-theoretical discourse into traditional narrative space in Anthills of the Savannah with a view to demonstrating part of the limitless possibilities that the continental African novel pulsates with. It evokes the coexistence of narrative and literary-theoretical discourse in this particular novel through critical focus on selected characters’ reflections on the place and role of the story and the storyteller in society, the entanglement of the story and the storyteller in political, cultural, and social issues, and the storyteller’s freedom to imagine the contours of the story in keeping with cherished political, cultural, economic, and social priorities in African societies. Admittedly, Achebe addresses some of these issues in his literary-critical texts, but scholars of the continental African novel still have to contend with the ways in which continental African novelists utilize narrative space to theorize the novel as a genre. To that end, this article avers that Achebe’s innovative co-optation of literary-theoretical issues into the narrative interstices of Anthills of the Savannah is exemplary in the development of both the continental African novel and literary-theoretical criteria that are instructive in the interpretation of this canon from an Afrocentric perspective.