Overview
- Explores several novels about dictatorships from Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire and Kenya produced during the period of neoliberalism
- Combines a macro-level discussion of postcolonial Africa with a micro-level focus on the formal, linguistic and thematic details of these works of fiction
- Argues that close readings of literary fiction can aid our understanding of the enduring problem of authoritarian state structures in postcolonial Africa
Part of the book series: New Comparisons in World Literature (NCWL)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book examines the representation of dictators and dictatorships in African fiction. It examines how the texts clarify the origins of postcolonial dictatorships and explore the shape of the democratic-egalitarian alternatives. The first chapter explains the ‘neoliberal’ period after the 1970s as an effective ‘recolonization’ of Africa by Western states and international financial institutions. Dictatorship is theorised as a form of concentrated economic and political power that facilitates Africa’s continued dependency in the context of world capitalism. The deepest aspiration of anti-colonial revolution remains the democratization of these authoritarian states inherited from the colonial period. This book discusses four novels by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Ahmadou Kourouma, Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in order to reveal how their themes and forms dramatize this unfinished struggle between dictatorship and radical democracy.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Robert Spencer is Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of Cosmopolitan Criticism and Postcolonial Literature (2011) and the co-author of For Humanism: Explorations in Theory and Politics, with David Alderson (2017), and co-author of Postcolonial Locations: New Directions in Postcolonial Studies, with Anastasia Valassopoulos (2020).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Dictators, Dictatorship and the African Novel
Book Subtitle: Fictions of the State under Neoliberalism
Authors: Robert Spencer
Series Title: New Comparisons in World Literature
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66556-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-66555-5Published: 02 March 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-66558-6Published: 03 March 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-66556-2Published: 01 March 2021
Series ISSN: 2634-6095
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6109
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 276
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Literature, general, African Literature, Imperialism and Colonialism, Contemporary Literature