The Novel in Africa and the Caribbean since 1950 examines the institutional and social peculiarities that make fiction produced in Africa and the Atlantic World since 1950 important to the history of the novel in English.

Imagination and the Creative Impulse in the New Literatures in English brings together the proceedings of a symposium organised by the editors at the University of Trento in 1990. At a time when the study of the post-colonial literatures is gaining more widespread recognition, scholars based mainly at universities in Italy and Germany were invited to address the manner in which writers are giving literary expression to the complexity of contemporary post-colonial and multicultural societies and to consider, from their differing perspectives on the new literatures, central questions of formal experimentation, linguistic innovation, social and political commitment, textual theory and cross-culturality. Focusing on such major writers such as Achebe, Soyinka and Walcott, as well as on lesser-known figures such as Jack Davis, Witi Ihimaera, Rohinton Mistry and Manohar Malgonkar, the contributors take up many themes characteristic of the new literatures: the challenge posed to traditional authority, the expression of national identity, the role of literature in the liberation struggle, modes of literary practice in multicultural societies; the relationship of the new literatures in English to that of the former metropolitan centre; and the complex intertextuality characterizing much of the literary production of post-colonial societies.

The book analyses how Africans and Africa relate to other parts of the multilateral world, and to the world in general, and how these relations stem from local, national and regional interactions in different parts of Africa, as well as Africa as a whole. The first part focuses on the assumptions that are necessary to understand the role of Africa on the global stage, especially from the perspectives of political philosophy and global and international studies. The second part of the book looks at both Afropolitan trends and the limits of Afropolitanism. In the third part the authors focus on specific African global tendencies stemming from the local conditions in several case studies. Traditional and modern politics is connected, problematically, with the current Jihadist organisations in the local African conditions related to unilateralism and global war on terror, for example. The fourth part deals with the relevance of the language ambivalence in relation to global interactions. It examines various views of African philosophy and lays bare the perception of earlier colonial languages in view of their current strength of global action. This book will be of interest to scholars of African studies, political philosophy, politics and global studies.

THIS IS AN NJR - NOT JACKET BLURB, DO NOT USE IT THIS RAW FORM -This new and original work is the only recent monographic treatment of the Zimbabwean novel and its political implications. An earlier one by Veit-Wild (1992) has not been updated, and other, such as that by Zhuwarara (2001), are not easily available outside Zimbabwe. The author resided in Zimbabwe for almost a decade and has visited the country regularly in the last five years. She has published extensively on Zimbabwean literature, and brings to her work a deep contextual richness as well as theoretical sophistication. Thoroughly up-to-date, the book examines all the published novels of the recently-deceased Yvonne Vera (d. April 2005) as well as major novels of five other internationally-acclaimed Zimbabwean writers, including Tsitsi Dangarembga and Chenjerai Hove. It does so against a political backdrop which goes right up to the March 2005 parliamentary elections. The book provides a modern and original historical account of post-independence Zimbabwean writing and its relationship to history and politics. The critical investigation focuses on fictional representations of space-time – which links the book the tragically topical Zimbabwean issue of land. Dr Primorac employs a form of literary and cultural theory reminiscent of Bakhtinian analysis, but drawn at length from East European theoretical sources. She investigates what the novels have to say about the Zimbabwean condition, and makes a sophisticated link between ideas about space-time and novelistic ideologies. More than that, drawing a parallel with the experience of Eastern Europe, she shows how the novel itself breaks out of the confines of the quasi-Marxist analysis which still holds sway in Zimbabwe. As such, the Zimbabwean novel is itself a source of hope in that troubled land. Ranka Primorac has degrees from the universities of Zagreb, Zimbabwe and Nottingham Trent. She has taught Africa-related courses at several institutions of higher learning in Britain, including the University of Cambridge and New York University in London. She is interested in non-western writing and cultures, theoretical approaches to the novel and the narrative production of space-time. Her co-edited volume, Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture was published in 2005 by Weaver Press in Harare.

Columbia's guides to postwar African literature paint a unique portrait of the continent's rich and diverse literary traditions. This volume examines the rapid rise and growth of modern literature in the three postcolonial nations of Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia. It tracks the multiple political and economic pressures that have shaped Central African writing since the end of World War II and reveals its authors' heroic efforts to keep their literary traditions alive in the face of extreme poverty and AIDS. Adrian Roscoe begins with a list of key political events. Since writers were composing within both colonial and postcolonial contexts, he pays particular attention to the nature of British colonialism, especially theories regarding its provenance and motivation. Roscoe discusses such historical figures as David Livingstone, Cecil Rhodes, and Sir Harry Johnston, as well as modern power players, including Robert Mugabe, Kenneth Kaunda, and Kamuzu Banda. He also addresses efforts to create a literary-historical record from an African perspective, an account that challenges white historiographies in which the colonized was neither agent nor informer. A comprehensive alphabetical guide profiles both established and emerging authors and further illustrates issues raised in the introduction. Roscoe then concludes with a detailed bibliography recommending additional reading and sources. At the close of World War II the people of Central Africa found themselves mired in imperial fatigue and broken promises of freedom. This fueled a desire for liberation and a major surge in literary production, and in this illuminating guide Roscoe details the campaigns for social justice and political integrity, for education and economic empowerment, and for gender equity, participatory democracy, rural development, and environmental care that characterized this exciting period of development.