Abstract
Adabi Tricia Nwaubani, author of the acclaimed I Do Not Come to You by Chance (2009) published an eloquent article in the New York Times of 28 November 2014, speaking of the challenges faced by Nigerian writers, given the lack of publishing and bookselling infrastructure in their country. Many are forced to self-publish; only those published and acclaimed in the West receive recognition and the dominance of Western publishers, agents and critics, which has a distorting effect on African literature, Nwaubani writes.
We are telling only the stories that foreigners allow us to tell… All this combined can make African readers feel that African literature exists not for them, but for Western eyes. Why else have brutality and depravity been the core of many celebrated African stories? It appears that publishers have allotted Africa the slot for supplying the West with savage entertainment (stories about ethnic cleansing, child soldiers, human trafficking, dictatorships, rights abuses and so on). The same stereotypes Africans often claim to abhor tend to form the foundations for our literary successes. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/african-books-for-western-eyes.html?emc=eta1&_r=0)
The notable new publications by West African writers, come inevitably through American and British publishers and are set, sometimes entirely, in America or Europe, as Nwaubani points out. Chris Abani’s Secret History of Las Vegas has moved a long way from Nigeria to a phantasmagoria of Las Vegas, a nuclear blast, conjoined twins and a central character, half-Zulu, half-Indian, haunted by a past in Apartheid South Africa. Critics hailed the “audacity of Abani’s imagination”. Atta Sefi’s A Bit of Difference also attracted favourable reviews, including one by Helon Habila in The Guardian (see http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/22/a-bit-difference-sefi-atta-review). The novel features Deola Bello, a successful Nigerian professional working for an international charity, headquartered in London, her friends in London, her family and a love affair in Nigeria, where she is sent on an assignment. Okey Ndibe’s second novel Foreign Gods follows a Nigerian-born New York taxi driver into the world of dodgy art dealers and back home to Nigeria to steal a local deity. The narrator of Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief returns to Lagos after fifteen years in New York. The experience of Nigerians returning after many years in the diaspora is thus a common theme, but Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird, an adaptation of Snow White, is set entirely in the United States during the 1950s, exploring issues of “whiteness” and “blackness”.
Canonical writers were celebrated on significant birthdays or anniversaries. Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80 featured contributions by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Nadine Gordimer, Sefi Atta, Toni Morrison and Derek Walcott. More ephemeral assessments and features appeared in the Nigerian press. The Institute of English Studies of the University of London held an important conference: Arrow of God at 50 (http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/ies-conferences/ArrowOfGod50).
The lucrative Nigerian Prize for literature was awarded to Sam Ukala for his drama Iredi War.
Bibliography
Poetry
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Awoonor, Kofi The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, 1964–2013 663pp Amalion (Dakar) CFA 10,000, £14.50 and University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln) £14.95.
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Drama
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Criticism
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Fadoyebo, Isaac “The Particular and the Work of Retrospection in Isaac Fadoyebo’s ‘A Stroke of Unbelievable Luck’” Oliver Coates African Research & Documentation 125 pp45–63.
Habila, Helon “Fictional Narrative and the Reflective Self in Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel Owojecho Omoha Matatu 45 pp287-305.
Irobi, Esiaba Esoaba Irobi’s Drama and the Postcolony: Theory and Practice of Postcolonial Performance Isidore Diala Kraft Books (Nigeria) 298pp £22.95.
Laing, Kojo “Postcolonial Encounters Re-Envisioned: Kojo Laing’s Woman of the Aeroplanes as Trickster Narrative Thomas Jay Lynn Matatu 45 pp149–62.
Maduku, Richard “Richard Maduku’s Kokoro Compound – A Postmodern Reading” Dele Bamidele and Rotimi Agbana Matatu 42 pp244–54.
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— “The Creative Imagination in Ben Okri’s The Landscape Within” Rosemary Gray English Academy Review 30(2) pp21-30 [2013].
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Soyinka, Wole African Theatre 13: Ngugi wa Thiong’o & Wole Soyinka Martin Banham, James Gibbs and Femi Osofisan Woodbridge xv+128pp James Currey £19.99.
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