West Africa

Abstract

The West African novel in English since 1960 is defined by the output of older novelists like Cyprian Ekwensi, Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi, Wole Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, John Munonye and Ayi Kwei Armah, and the contribution of latter-day novelists like Obinkaram Echewa, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ben Okri, Zaynab Alkali and Festus Iyayi. The work of Ekwensi, Achebe and Nwapa in particular spans the period under discussion: 1960 to the late eighties. Achebe’s second novel No Longer at Ease (1960), for example, is separated from his latest novel Anthills of the Savannah (1987) by almost three decades. The sequel to Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana (1961) appears twenty-five years later as Jagua Nana’s Daughter (1986). The message implicit in Flora Nwapa’s first novel Efuru (1966) — that ‘distinguished’ women like Efuru are ‘remarkable’ — is made explicit in her recent novel Women are Different (1986). Equally worthy of note is the observation that since the mid-seventies, the pitch of the new voices emerging in Anglophone West African fiction has been evident in novels like Echewa’s The Land’s Lord and The Crippled Dancer, Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy,¹ Okri’s The landscapes Within, Alkali’s The Stillborn and Iyayi’s Heroes and Violence.