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Blazing the Path. Fifty Years of Things Fall Apart is a collection of new perspectives on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, a novel that was first published in 1958 and which has since become a classic of world literature. Aside from opening up the novel to new interpretive strategies of well established literary critics, and clarifying some past ones, this collection of essays repositions Things Fall Apart as a literary piece with interdisciplinary and multidimensional appeal. The volume fulfills the objective of using the novel to interrogate the colonial and pre-colonial African past with Nigeria's post-modern present, and projects the country into a future that looks to literature for a deeper understanding of where Nigeria is as a citizen of an emerging global village.
Contributors analyse the theories behind children's literature, its functions and cultural significance, and suggest the new directions this literature is taking in terms of its craft, themes and intentions.
"Story of Jean-Marie Coquard from Brittany, a sailor in the merchant navy from his 14th to his 24th year, who in 1890 became a missionary priest in Abeokuta, capital of the Egba people to Nigeria. Without any formal training he exhibited an extraordinary aptitude for medical work and established one of Nigeria's premier hospitals in 1894, acting as the hospital's surgeon. His reputation spread throughout Abeokuta and nearby Lagos and eventually extended beyond the borders of present-day Nigeria..."--Back
Sadly, the same cannot be said about scholarly publishing which to all intents and purposes continues to remain the flotsam and jetsam of the African publishing landscape. --
This title traces the rise of two dynamic informal enterprise clusters in Nigeria and explores their slide into trajectories of Pentecostalism, poverty and violent vigilantism.
This special issue focuses on literary texts by African writers in which the protagonist returns to his/her 'original' or ancestral 'home' in Africa from other parts of the world. Ideas of return - intentional and actual - have been a consistent feature of the literature of Africa and the African diaspora: from Equiano's autobiography in 1789 to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel 'Americanah'. African literature has represented returnees in a range of locations and dislocations including having a sense of belonging, being alienated in a country they can no longer recognize, or experiencing a multiple sense of place. Contributors, writing on literature from the 1970s to the present, examine the extent to which the original place can be reclaimed with or without renegotiations of 'home'. Articles on Nuruddin Farah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Pede Hollist, Ayi Kwei Amah, Dinaw Mengestu, Benjamin Kwakye. Interview with Tendai Huchu. Featured Articles by Bernth Lindfors, Eustace Palmer & Helen Chukwuma. Literary supplement : four poems by Tsitsi Ella Jaji .
'If you want to understand Nigeria's history in one succinct go, this is a very good choice.' Noo Saro-Wiwa Known as the African Giant, Nigeria's story is complex and often contradictory. How, despite the ravages of colonialism, civil war, ongoing economic disappointment and most recently the Boko Haram insurgency, has the country managed to stay together for a hundred years? Why, despite an abundance of oil, mineral and agricultural wealth, have so many of its people remained in poverty? These are the key questions explored by Richard Bourne in this remarkable and wide-ranging account of Nigeria's history, from its creation in 1914 to the historic 2015 elections and beyond. Featuring a wealth of original research and interviews, this is an essential insight into the shaping of a country where, despite the seemingly dashed optimism that was raised at independence, there still remains hope 'the Nigeria project' may still succeed.
The sixteen chapters in this book form a Festschrift in honour of Henry Chakava, the distinguished Kenyan publisher. With a Forward by Tanzanian publisher Walter Bgoya , his long-time collaborator in furthering the causes of independent African publishing, the topics cover the full range of issues in which he has been central over more than forty years. His notable achievements include the first local buy-out of a British multinational publishing house, being one of the founders of African Books Collective and the African Publishers' Network, and participation in international counsels such as the Bellagio Publishing Network. Amongst the contributors are prominent Kenyan authors Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Simon Gikandi and Micere Githae Mugo; Kenyan colleagues from the book trade world; close collaborators in Uganda and Nigeria, and some international colleagues. The greatest range of the contributors are from within Africa. There are subject specific chapters on such issues as training, copyright, publishing in the digital age, and an overview of publishing at Codesria including the vexed issue of marginalisation of African language publishing.
Africans and Globalization: Linguistic, Literary, and Technological Contents and Discontents considers the substance and dissatisfactions of globalization on Africa and its Diaspora. Although variously framed across disciplines, globalization has generally entailed non-milieu bound interactions, which alters the existence of its participants. The concerns about the impact of globalization have been raised in relation to Africa and have related to the helpful and deleterious effects. Increasingly, industrialization (without consideration of environmental impacts) and westernization (including erosion of indigenous values) are perceived as synonymous with globalization. This multidisciplinary ...