This monograph explores the concept of mobility in Zimbabwean works of fiction published in English between the introduction of the controversial Fast Track Land Reform Programme and the end of the Mugabe era. Since 2000, Zimbabwe has experienced unprecedented levels of transnational out-migration in response to the political conflicts and economic downturn often referred to as the Zimbabwe Crisis. This, in turn, has led to an increased outpouring of literary texts about migration, both in locally produced texts and in works by authors based in the diaspora. Situating Zimbabwe’s recent literary developments in a wider context of Southern African writing and history, this book focuses on texts that portray movement within Zimbabwe’s cities, between village and city, to South Africa, and overseas. The author examines important developments and trends in recent Zimbabwean literature, investigating the link between state authoritarianism and control of mobility, and literature’s potential to intervene into dominant political discourses. The book includes in-depth analyses of ten recent works of fiction published in the post-2000 era and develops mobility as a key category of literary analysis of Zimbabwe’s contemporary literatures. Setting out a rich dialogue between literary criticism and mobility studies, this book will be of interest to researchers of African literature, Southern Africa, migration, and mobility.

A comparative study of contemporary realist novels that employ totality as a method and a formal principle to represent the social and economic inequalities of the present, this book examines writing in English, Italian, Kannada, and Spanish by authors from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Italy, India and Mexico. By theorizing four modalities of totalization employed by contemporary realist writers, this book explores the current resurgence of realism and challenges critical approaches that consider it naive or formally unsophisticated. Instead, it argues that realist novels offer a self-conscious and serious representation of the world we inhabit while actively envisioning new social designs and political configurations. Through comparative studies of novels by Fernanda Melchor, NoViolet Bulawayo, Vivek Shanbhag, Nicola Lagioia, Igiaba Scego, Yaa Gyasi and Roberto Bolaño, this book further explains why realism can be a powerful antidote to the skepticism about the possibility of making truth-claims in humanist research.

This book investigates how culture reflects change in Zimbabwe, focusing predominantly on Mnangagwa’s 2017 coup, but also uncovering deeper roots for how renewal and transition are conceived in the country. Since Emmerson Mnangagwa ousted Robert Mugabe in 2017, he has been keen to defi ne his "Second Republic" or "New Dispensation" with a rhetoric of change and a rejection of past political and economic cultures. This multi and inter- disciplinary volume looks to the (social) media, language/ discourse, theatre, images, political speeches and literary fiction and non- fiction to see how they have reflected on this time of unprecedented upheaval. The book argues that themes of self- renewal stretch right back to the formative years of the ZANU PF, and that despite the longevity of Mugabe’s tenure, the latest transition can be seen as part of a complex and protracted layering of postcolonial social, economic and political changes. Providing an innovative investigation of how political change in Zimbabwe is reflected on in cultural texts and products, this book will be of interest to researchers across African history, literature, politics, culture and post- colonial studies.

This book examines the representation of figures, memories and images of childhood in selected contemporary diasporic African fiction by Adichie, Abani, Wainaina and Oyeyemi. The book argues that childhood is a key framework for thinking about contemporary African and African Diasporic identities. It argues that through the privileging of childhood memory, alternative conceptions of time emerge in this literature, and which allow African writers to re-imagine what family, ethnicity, nation means within the new spaces of diaspora that a majority of them occupy. The book therefore looks at the connections between childhood, space, time and memory, childhood gender and sexuality, childhoods in contexts of war, as well as migrant childhoods. These dimensions of childhood particularly relate to the return of the memory of Biafra, the figures of child soldiers, memories of growing up in Cold War Africa, queer boyhoods/sonhood as well as experiences of migration within Africa, North America and Europe.

This book is an in-depth study of the category "stranger" as represented in four contemporary Afrodiasporic novels of female authorship: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers. Examined from an interdisciplinary perspective that brings together different approaches to the figure of the stranger and Affect Theory, the plurality of experiences of estrangement, disorientation and unbelonging portrayed in these texts allows expansion upon Sara Ahmed’s (2000) investigation of "stranger fetishism" and, in so doing, contributes to the recent call for a more nuanced understanding of the idea of "stranger". In particular, the critical and comparative study of the different migration experiences of the protagonists reveals that, within the framework of the contemporary African diaspora to the West, "strange(r)ness" is a situated, embodied and emotional condition that depends on the politics of location and of identity from which it emerges. This book will particularly appeal to scholars and students in the fields of Postcolonial Studies, African Diaspora Studies and Black Women’s Literature, and will also be suitable for students at graduate and advanced undergraduate levels in English Studies.

Contemporary African Literature in English explores the contours of representation in contemporary Anglophone African literature, drawing on a wide range of authors including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Aminatta Forna, Brian Chikwava, Ngug? wa Thiong'o, Nuruddin Farah and Chris Abani.

The Routledge Companion to Migration Literature offers a comprehensive survey of an increasingly important field. It demonstrates the influence of the “age of migration” on literature and showcases the role of literature in shaping socio-political debates and creating knowledge about the migratory trajectories, lives, and experiences that have shaped the post-1989 world. The contributors examine a broad range of literary texts and critical approaches that cover the spectrum between voluntary and forced migration. In doing so, they reflect the shift in recent years from the author-centric study of migrant writing to a more inclusive conception of migration literature. The book contains sections on key terms and critical approaches in the field; important genres of migration literature; a range of forms and trajectories of migration, with a particular focus on the global South; and on migration literature’s relevance in social contexts outside the academy. Its range of scholarly voices on literature from different geographical contexts and in different languages is central to its call for and contribution to a pluriversal turn in literary migration studies in future scholarship. This Companion will be of particular interest to scholars working on contemporary migration literature, and it also offers an introduction to new students and scholars from other fields. Chapter 15 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.