Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In 1952, Dylan Thomas described Amos Tutuola's
The Palm-Wine Drunkard
as 'brief, thronged, grisly and
bewitching' and a 'nightmare of indescribable adventures'.
Nigeria
Nigeria is credited with producing the first African novels of international quality. With
The Palm-Wine Drunkard
, about an insatiable drunkard who seeks his palm-wine tapster
in the world of the dead, Amos Tutuola was the first African writer to catch the world's at-
tention by providing a link between traditional storytelling and the modern novel. If Tu-
tuola made the world sit up and take notice, Chinua Achebe won for African literature the
international acclaim it still enjoys to this day. His classic work,
Things Fall Apart
(1958),
has sold over eight million copies in 30 languages, more than any other African work. Set
in the mid-19th century, this novel charts the collision between pre-colonial Ibo society
and European missionaries. Achebe's
Anthills of the Savannah
is a satirical study of polit-
ical disorder and corruption. It was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize. His memoir of the
Biafra war,
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
(2012) has caused waves
in Nigeria but has been critically acclaimed.
Building on the work of these early pioneers, Wole Soyinka has built up an extraordin-
ary body of work, which includes plays (
A Dance of the Forest, The Man Died, Opera
Wonyosi
and
A Play of Giants
), poetry (including
Idane & Other Poems
), novels (includ-
ing
The Interpreters
), political essays and the fantastical childhood memoir
Ake
. Praised
for his complex writing style, Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986; he was
the first author from Africa to achieve this accolade.
The exceptionally talented Ben Okri is a thoughtful essayist (
A Way of Being Free
)
and an accomplished poet (
An African Elegy
), but his magical realist novels have seen
him labelled the Nigerian Gabriel García Márquez. His novel
The Famished Road,
which
follows Azaro, a spirit-child, won the Booker Prize in 1991. When critics grumbled that to
appreciate the topics style and symbolism the reader had to 'understand Africa', Okri re-
called reading Victorian novelists such as Dickens as a schoolboy in Nigeria. His
Songs of
Enchantment
(1993) and
Infinite Riches
(1998) completed his Azaro trilogy. He continues
to fuse modern style with traditional mythological themes in his later novels
Dangerous
Love, Astonishing the Gods
and, most recently,
Starbook
.
Buchi Emecheta is one of Africa's most successful female authors. Her novels include
Slave Girl, The Joys of Motherhood, Rape of Shavi
and
Kehinde,
and they focus with hu-
mour and irrepressible irony on the struggles of African women to overcome their second-
class treatment by society.
