This book explores how modern Nigerian fiction is rooted in writers’ understanding of their identity and perception of Nigeria as a country and home. Surveying a broad range of authors and texts, the book shows how these fictionalized representations of Nigeria reveal authentic perceptions of Nigeria’s history and culture today. Many of the lessons in these works of literature provide cautionary tales and critiques of Nigeria, as well as an examination of the lasting impact of colonialism. Furthermore, the book presents the nation as both the framework and subject of its narrative. By conducting literary analyses of Nigerian fiction with historical reference points, this work demonstrates how Nigerian literature can convey profound themes and knowledge that resonates with audiences, teaching Nigerians and non-Nigerians about the colonial and postcolonial experience. The chapters cover topics on nationhood, women’s writing, postcolonial modernity, and Nigerian literature in the digital age.

The Complex Interplay between Power, Politics, and African Agency: The Philosophy of Toyin Falola by Serges Djoyou Kamga examines the impact of colonialism by using Toyin Falola’s philosophy as a framework. It delves into the evolution of African political culture under colonial rule. This book offers a unique perspective on the intricate dynamics of African society, providing a deeper understanding of how power and politics have shaped African culture. Kamga emphasizes the complex interplay between these elements and highlights the significance of African voices in determining their own destiny. Using Falola’s works, this book analyzes and critiques the influence of Europe and establishes the ongoing unequal relationship between ex-colonized African countries and their imperialist colonizers. This book is highly recommended for scholars of African studies, political science, and anyone interested in African history and culture.

Eco-Critical Literature: Regreening African Landscapescritically examines the representations, constructions, and imaginings of the relationship between the human and non-human worlds in contemporary African literature and culture. It offers innovative, incisive, and critical perspectives on the importance of sustaining a symbiotic relationship between humans and their environment. The book thus carries African scholarship beyond the mere analysis of themes and style to ethical and activist roles of literature having an impact on readers and the public. It is a scholarship geared towards rectifying ecological imbalance that is prevalent in many parts of the continent that forms the setting, context, and thematic discourse of the works or authors studied in this book. Besides sensitizing the African readership to the need for the restoration of harmony between man and the environment, this book equally aims to further familiarize scholars and students working on African literature and culture with the theoretical concerns of eco-criticism.

Exploring the idea of a ‘Global Africa’, this book examines how African literary and cultural productions have changed due to the social and political influences brought about by increased globalisation. A variety of European theoretical concepts are applied to Africa, demonstrating the universality of the African experience.

Tanure Ojaide is an award-winning writer, both creative and academic. This collection of his essays and lectures from over the past decade, addresses issues of culture and literature from a personal African perspective. The focus of this book is African culture and its imaginative productions in the arts, especially in literature. The author also examines the direction of African culture and its artistic creations in a global age. The titles of the essays and lectures are: the challenges of the African writer today; African culture and the New World Order; nativity and the creative process: the Niger Delta in my poetry; African culture today; divine mentoring in poetry and its performance; self, myth and historical consciousness: an African writer's reflection; Nigerian literature in the 21st century: what direction?; whose English?: the African writer and the language issue; countering terror in the literary world: the example of activism; and anxieties and hopes: recent African poetry. Tanure Ojaide's awards include the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region (1987), the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry (1988, 1997), the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award (1988), and the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Award (1988, 1994, and 2003). He is also the recipient of the 2006 UNC Charlotte's First Citizens Bank Scholar Medal Award for his writing and academic accomplishments, and is a Fellow in Writing of the University of Iowa. He taught for many years at the University of Maiduguri, and is currently Professor of African-American and African Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he teaches African/Pan-African literature and art.

Literature remains one of the few disciplines that reflect the experiences, sensibility, worldview, and living realities of its people. Contemporary African literature captures the African experience in history and politics in a multiplicity of ways. Politics itself has come to intersect and impact on most, if not all, aspects of the African reality. This relationship of literature with African people’s lives and condition forms the setting of this study. Tanure Ojaide’s Indigeneity, Globalization, and African Literature: Personally Speaking belongs with a well-established tradition of personal reflections on literature by African creative writer-critics. Ojaide’s contribution brings to the table the perspective of what is now recognized as a “second generation” writer, a poet, and a concerned citizen of Nigeria’s Niger Delta area.

Nation, Power and Dissidence in Third Generation Nigerian Poetry in English is a theoretical and analytical survey of the poetry that emerged in Nigeria in the 1980s. Hurt into poetry, the poets collectively raise aesthetics of resistance that dramatises the nationalist imagination bridging the gap between poetry and politics in Nigeria. The emerging generation of poetic voices raises an outcry against the repressive military regimes of the 1980s and 1990s. Ingrained in the tradition of protest literature in Africa, the third-generation poetry is presented here as part of the cultural struggles that unseat military despotism and envisage a democratic society.