African Literature Book List ·

Nigerian Video Films

Revised and Expanded Edition

Nigerian video films—dramatic features shot on video and sold as cassettes—are being produced at the rate of nearly one a day, making them the major contemporary art form in Nigeria. The history of African film offers no precedent for such a huge, popularly based industry.…

Oral Literature and Performance in Southern Africa

This book draws together contributions from literary studies, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and African language studies to analyze the complex functioning of oral texts and models in differing contexts.…

Nomadic Voices of Exile

Feminine Identity in the Francophone Literature of the Maghreb

Contemporary French writing on the Maghreb—that part of Africa above the Sahara—is truly postmodern in scope, the rich product of multifaceted histories promoting the blending of two worlds, two identities, two cultures, and two languages.…

Es’kia Mphahlele

Themes of Alienation and African Humanism

“If you really want to understand South Africa, read black African writers. Read Es'kia Mphahlele,” is the advice proffered to diplomats and scholars by professor and publisher Donald Herdeck.…

Your Madness, Not Mine

Women's writing in Cameroon has so far been dominated by Francophone writers. The short stories in this collection represent the yearnings and vision of an Anglophone woman, who writes both as a Cameroonian and as a woman whose life has been shaped by the minority status her people occupy within the nation-state.…

Sol Plaatje

Selected Writings

Sol Plaatje is one of South Africa’s most important political and literary figures. A pioneer in the history of the black press, he was one of the founders of the African National Congress, a leading spokesman for black opinion throughout his life, and the author of three well-known books: Mafeking Diary, Native Life in South Africa, and his historical novel, Mhudi.…

Freedom in Our Lifetime

Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede

When a group of young political activists met in 1944 to launch the African National Congress Youth League, it included the nucleus of a remarkable generation of leaders who forged the struggle for freedom and equality in South Africa for the next half century: Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Jordan Ngubane, Ellen Kuzwayo, Albertina Smith, A.…

Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing

André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, and J. M. Coetzee

The representation of pain and suffering in narrative form is an ongoing ethical issue in contemporary South African literature. Can violence be represented without sensationalistic effects, or, alternatively, without effects that tend to be conservative because they place the reader in a position of superiority over the victim or the perpetrator? Jolly looks at three primary South African authors—André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, and J.…

Womanist and Feminist Aesthetics

A Comparative Review

Alice Walker’s womanist theory about black feminist identity and practice also contains a critique of white liberal feminism. This is the first in-depth study to examine issues of identity and difference within feminism by drawing on Walker’s notion of an essential black feminist consciousness.…

Echoes of the Sunbird

An Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry

This volume presents a broad overview of the work of seven of Africa’s leading poets. Five of them have received international recognition: Niyi Osundare and Chinua Achebe, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize; Osundare and Antonio Jacinto, the Noma Prize; and Jose Craveirinha, the Camoes Prize.…

Rendering Things Visible

Essays on South African Literary Culture

Much recent critical practice, sharpened by an engagement with theory, has questioned conventional notions about literature. There has been a tendency to democratize our understanding of literature, so as to include a wide range of cultural practices that might formerly have been excluded from literary-critical concern.…

Wanasema

Conversations with African Writers

There is a tendency to regard African literature as a homogenous product. Certainly it is true that African writers have created a vibrant, modern literature. Nevertheless, they come from specific societies and reflect vastly differing worlds.…

From Sleep Unbound

From Sleep Unbound portrays the life of Samya, an Egyptian woman who is taken at age 15 from her Catholic boarding school and forced into a loveless and humiliating marriage. Eventually sundered from every human attachment, Samya lapses into despair and despondence, and finally an emotionally caused paralysis.…