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Writing from Africa is as varied and rich as the number of countries--and, more tellingly, the number of peoples--on the continent. A concept has developed over the years that an African literature exists--in the singular, as a monolithic entity, which would mean that all literature by Africans is essentially the same. Such an assumption is as erroneous as stating that all American literature fits an identical pattern, and the idea is even more ludicrous regarding African writing, given the relative sizes of the two land masses: The United States would fit into one corner of the African continent.
In September 1992, I began an intensive study of African literatures funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Teacher-Scholar Grant. I actually plunged into the reading, however, as soon as I was informed that I had received the grant in December 1991. After more than a year of reading creative works by African authors (and essays about the literature--both by African and other writers), I became aware of a far greater range of writers than I had been at the beginning of the research project; nevertheless, somewhat to my surprise, I found that the writers whose names seemed most prominent during my preliminary research remained among the dominant figures.
THE "BIG THREE" PLUS ONE
The pantheon of African writers (outside of South Africa, which I will consider separate) is headed by the "big three": Chinua Achebe of Nigeria, Ngugi wa Thiong'o (who originally published under the name James Ngugi) of Kenya, and Wole Soyinka, also of Nigeria. All three have crafted original and compelling literature; they have experimented with varieties of structure and style to express their complex ideas, and they have engaged with the social and political issues of the world. I would also like to include Camara Laye of Guinea in this first group, but primarily for one work.
Chinua Achebe
Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart (1991), written in 1959, more or less inaugurated the era of composed writing of fiction in Africa. Focused on one man, the novel depicts the life of an African village in a pre-colonial period and then dramatizes the impact on the people as colonialism brings its changes. Remarkably, Things Fall Apart remains an intriguing, effective, and extremely...