This collection of essays introduces students of African literature to the heritage of the African prose narrative, starting from its oral base and covering its linguistic and cultural diversity. The book brings together essays on both the classics and the relatively new works in all subgenres of the African prose narrative, including the traditional epic, the novel, the short story and the autobiography. The chapters are arranged according to the respective thematic paradigms under which the discussed works fall.

In the African context, there exists the 'myth' that orality means tradition. Written and oral verbal art are often regarded as dichotomies, one excluding the other. While orature is confused with 'tradition', literature is ascribed to modernity. Furthermore, local languages are ignored and literature is equated with writing in foreign languages. The contributions in this volume take issue with such preconceptions and explore the multiple ways in which literary and oral forms interrelate and subvert each other, giving birth to new forms of artistic expression. They emphasize the local agency of the African poet and writer, which resists the global commodification of literature through the international bestseller lists of the cultural industry. The first section traces the movement from oral to written texts, which in many cases coincides with a switch from African to European languages. But as the essays in the section on "New Literary Languages" make clear, in other cases a true philological work is accomplished in the African language to create a new written and literary medium. Through the mixing of languages in the cities, such as the Sheng spoken in Kenya or the bilinguality of a writer such as Cheik Aliou Ndao (Senegal), new idioms for literary expressions evolve. The use of new media, technology or music stimulate the emergence of new genres, such as Taarab in East Africa, radio poetry in Yoruba and Hausa, or Rap in the Senegal, as is shown in the section on "Forms of New Orality." It is a great achievement of this second volume of Versions and Subversions in African Literatures that it assembles contributions by scholars from the anglophone and the francophone world and that it covers literary production in a broad spectrum of languages: English, French, Hausa, Sheng, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Wolof and Yoruba. Some of the authors and cultural practitioners treated in detail are: Mobolaij Adenubi, Birago Diop, Boubacar Boris Diop, David Maillu, Thomas Mofolo, Cheik Aliou Ndao, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, Hubert Ogunde, Shaaban Robert, Wole Soyinka, Ibrahim YaroYahaya, and Sénouvo Agbota Zinsou.

Who killed Jacottet? Drawing on teh gret tradition of the "locked room" detective story, Tim Couzens sets out, eighty years after the event, to solve the crime.

This book is a critical study of South African literature, from colonial and pre-colonial times onwards. Christopher Heywood discusses selected poems, plays and prose works in five literary traditions: Khoisan, Nguni-Sotho, Afrikaans, English, and Indian. The discussion includes over 100 authors and selected works, including poets from Mqhayi, Marais and Campbell to Butler, Serote and Krog, theatre writers from Boniface and Black to Fugard and Mda, and fiction writers from Schreiner and Plaatje to Bessie Head and the Nobel prizewinners Gordimer and Coetzee. The literature is explored in the setting of crises leading to the formation of modern South Africa, notably the rise and fall of the Emperor Shaka's Zulu kingdom, the Colenso crisis, industrialisation, the colonial and post-colonial wars of 1899, 1914, and 1939, and the dissolution of apartheid society. In Heywood's study, South African literature emerges as among the great literatures of the modern world.

Although Chaka is considered an African literary masterpiece, Thomas Mofolo has paradoxically been dismissed by critics as an author naively extolling the virtues of the white man’s “civilizing mission” in Africa. Daniel M. Mengara’s Colonial Discourse and the Jesus-fication of King Chaka: How Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka Turned the Zulu Monarch into a Messiah offers a rereading of Chaka to show that Mofolo in fact astutely deconstructs, and then reconstructs, Zulu king Chaka into a messianic figure whose life trajectory and destiny blasphemously mirror those of Jesus Christ. This volume avoids the pitfalls of the traditional “mission interpretations” of Chaka and provides an interpretative inflection that paints a more nuanced and balanced picture and understanding of Thomas Molofo’s fictional account of the mythologized historical figure. Mengara delves into the circumstances and controversies surrounding the publication of the novel and shows how Molofo “Jesus-fied” King Chaka in a sly, yet sacrilegious ploy to subvert the colonial discourse and missionary ethos of his time. This book stands as a reassessment of Thomas Mofolo’s often-ignored nationalism and calls for a rediscovery of Mofolo’s work in ways that resituate him within the history of the African novel as the undisputed pioneer of engaged African literature.

Tells the classic story of the Zulu hero Chaka.

Lesotho is rather different from most other African countries. For starters, it is a kingdom, which preserves a traditional hierarchy and customs, and its population consists of one fairly homogenous ethnic group, although admittedly there are differences and occasional rifts within it. Then, it is a landlocked country, completely surrounded by South Africa on which is depends heavily. Economically, it has not been doing particularly well, this partly because the country is so poorly endowed by nature, and its people often eke out a living abroad. Politically, there have been ups and downs, the downs fortunately lying in the past, with Lesotho doing somewhat better since the latest elections. Socially and culturally, as hinted, it is quite unique and this can be gathered from reading the book. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Lesotho covers the full scope of Lesotho’s ancient, colonial, and independence eras. It gives greater emphasis to the more recent period and brings the book fully up-to-date. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on civil society, key events, leaders, governmental, international, religious, and other private organizations, policies, political movements and parties, economic elements, and many other areas that have shaped the country’s trajectory. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Lesotho.

From the ancient Egyptian inventors of the love lyric to contemporary poets, Bending the Bow: An Anthology of African Love Poetry gathers together both written and sung love poetry from Africa. This anthology is a work of literary archaeology that lays bare a genre of African poetry that has been overshadowed by political poetry. Frank Chipasula has assembled a historically and geographically comprehensive wealth of African love poetry that spans more than three thousand years. By collecting a continent’s celebrations and explorations of the nature of love, he expands African literature into the sublime territory of the heart. Bending the Bow traces the development of African love poetry from antiquity to modernity while establishing a cross-millennial dialogue. The anonymously written love poems fromPharaonic Egypt that open the anthology both predate Biblical love poetry and reveal the longevity of written love poetry in Africa. The middle section is devoted to sung love poetry from all regions of the continent. These great works serve as the foundation for modern poetry and testify to love poetry’s omnipresence in Africa. The final section, showcasing forty-eight modern African poets, celebrates the genre’s continuing vitality. Among those represented are Muyaka bin Hajji and Shaaban Robert,two major Swahili poets; Gabriel Okara, the innovative though underrated Nigerian poet; Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of Senegal and a founder of the Negritude Movement in francophone African literature; Rashidah Ismaili from Benin; Flavien Ranaivo from Madagascar; and Gabeba Baderoon from South Africa. Ranging from the subtly suggestive to the openly erotic, this collection highlights love’s endurance in a world too often riven by contention. Bending the Bow bears testimony to poetry’s role as conciliator while opening up a new area of study for scholars and students.

Why did the novel take such a long time to emerge in the colonial world? And, what cultural work did it come to perform in societies where subjects were not free and modes of social organization diverged from the European cultural centers where the novel gained its form and audience? Answering these questions and more, Volume 11, The Novel in Africa and the Caribbean since 1950 explores the institutions of cultural production that exerted influence in late colonialism, from missionary schools and metropolitan publishers to universities and small presses. How these structures provoke and respond to the literary trends and social peculiarities of Africa and the Caribbean impacts not only the writing and reading of novels in those regions, but also has a transformative effect on the novel as a global phenomenon. Together, the volume's 32 contributing experts tell a story about the close relationship between the novel and the project of decolonization, and explore the multiple ways in which novels enable readers to imagine communities beyond their own and thus made this form of literature a compelling catalyst for cultural transformation. The authors show that, even as the novel grows in Africa and the Caribbean as a mark of the elites' mastery of European form, it becomes the essential instrument for critiquing colonialism and for articulating the new horizons of cultural nationalism. Within this historical context, the volume examines works by authors such as Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, George Lamming, Jamaica Kincaid, V.S. Naipaul, Zoe Wicomb, J. M. Coetzee, and many others.