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In journalistic interviews, interviewers are usually in control, regulating the interaction by asking questions. Yet it is often interviewees who have the upper hand, talking about themselves to interviewers who [...]

This essay interrogates the 'postnation' in contemporary Swahili novel writing by involving a discussion of two other post-isms, namely postrealism and postmodernism. It starts out by arguing for a classification and periodization of post-independence Swahili writing according to three different paradigms of writing, i.e., a realist, a postrealist, and a nascent synthetic paradigm. Subsequently, it takes a look at postmodernism in Swahili novels and discusses whether it is possible to neatly differentiate between postrealism and postmodernism. The core part of the essay scrutinizes postnation writing in Swahili novels by relating it to its supposed predecessor of nation writing and asks whether and how postrealism and postmodernism are linked to postnation writing. It looks into different features of postnation writing and discusses to what extent they influence a novel text on the whole. Against the backdrop of this survey with a few brief case studies and examples, this essay relates the contemporary Swahili novel to Habila's reflections on 'postnationalist' writing and proposes a broader theorization of postnation writing. It ends by deliberating on whether there is a 'Swahili specific' and on further prospects of postnation writing in the Swahili novel., Interrogating the 'postnation' in African literary writing allows for a variety of perspectives. Postnationalist writing or 'postnation writing,' the term that I prefer, may relate to both the topic and [...]

Three decades ago, John Frow described literary character as 'the most problematic and ... undertheorized of the basic categories of narrative theory' (227). He might have added 'stigmatized' as well, [...]

The literary field in Africa came into emergence as a result of a collective yearning for lesser dependency on the symbolic constraints the Western center is forcing on its margins. Granted that a work sets itself up by setting up its own context, and that the African context stands out as one where oral literature is still alive in society, the manifestation of expressive forms associated with traditional literature in a novel must carry heavy weight in an interpretation of African works. For that reason, this essay will argue that, through her 'smuggling' of narrative forms drawn from oral literature, Aminata Sow Fall's fiction testifies to an oral discursivity at work in the novel. The archi-textual approach focuses on various strategies the Senegalese woman writer resorts to in order to inscribe, deep within her creative work in French, a traditional universe hitherto conveyed through oral forms of expression., 'What is the specificity of a given literary work?' Confronted with this general question, the African literature scholar would be well advised to formulate, as a substitute to it, a [...]

This discussion of the representation of child deprivation in contemporary African fiction involves the following three novels (in alphabetical order): Paradise (Abdulrazak Gurnah, Tanzania 1994), Purple Hibiscus (Chimamanda Adichie, Nigeria [...]

Both of Chimananda Adichie's novels name their relation to Achebe's Things Fall Apart. More important, they form part of a longer tradition of writing by African women, while at the same time, they extend that tradition. Like novels by Nwapa, Emecheta, Ba, and others, Adichie's novels represent a politics of the family while quietly but clearly telling stories of the nation; this is especially the case with her first novel, Purple Hibiscus. Adichie also tells more explicit tales of the Nigerian national imaginary, especially in her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. By appropriating some of the structural elements of Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, as she did of Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Adichie advances her storytelling in Purple Hibiscus by telling a domestic tale with yet stronger national overtones. By illustrating a crosscontinental set of inspirations and intertexts in Purple Hibiscus I reveal Adichie's exploration of the contemporary Nigerian political crisis., True great realism thus depicts man and society as complete entities.... Measured by this criterion, artistic trends determined by either exclusive introspection or exclusive extraversion equally impoverish and distort reality. [...]

In his enigmatic preface to the second edition of Arrow of God, Chinua Achebe warns us that authors should not play favorites with their own creations. By even raising the [...]

This essay compares self-reflexive devices in eighteenth-century novels and contemporary video games. The comparison suggests a long history of popular entertainment that draws attention to its own mediation while challenging [...]

Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage is often neglected in current studies that emphasize the role of colonialism and empire in experimental modernist novels. Following the work of Simon Gikandi, Bruce Robbins, and [...]

This article situates the popular picaresque novel La vida inutil de Pito Perez (1938) in its context of literary and social history. As a comic text, the novel engages readers of all kinds in an attempt to foment change, despite the shortcomings of the protagonist and the revolution through which he lives. The work ensures the survival of the picaro in Mexico as a sardonic hero who, nonetheless, will not wholly abandon revolutionary ideals and, indeed, wishes to pass these on to the growing middle class that spawned both Pito Perez and his more fortunate author, J. Ruben Romero. Este articulo situa la conocida novela picaresca La vida inutil de Pito Perez (1938) en su contexto de historia literaria y social. Como texto comico, la novela atrae a toda clase de lectores en su intento de fomentar el cambio, a pesar de las fallas del protagonista y del contexto revolucionario en el que vive. La obra asegura la supervivencia del picaro mexicano como un heroe sarcastico que, no obstante, no abandonara los ideales revolucionarios y, de hecho, desea transmitirlos a la creciente clase media que dio luz a ambos Pito Perez y su autor mas afortunado, J. Ruben Romero.

Jon Hassler and Joseph Plut met at Central Lakes College (then Brainerd Community College), Brainerd, Minnesota, in 1968, where both taught English--Hassler 1968-1980 and Plut 1965-2001. Hassler then taught at [...]

Two key characters of Theodor Fontane's novel Frau Jenny Treibel, Professor Schmidt, and the artist figure Adolar Krola are closely analyzed. The novel is a playful act of piracy couched in a siren song and shares many artistic features with Fontane's other works such as Schach von Wuthenow (1883) and Der Stechlin (1898).

As early as 1961, C. S. Lewis tried to put an end to literary criticism based on 'taste'--which would all too obviously exclude popular reading--and to replace it with a [...]

Saul Bellow's The Dean's December (1) is in many ways an apocalyptic novel. It depicts a world in the grip of spiritual crisis. It has a prophetlike narrator who believes [...]

This issue's Question and Answer builds upon that in the last issue in two respects. First, it requires close reading of areas of a text (AO3), and then those areas […]

A discussion of Don Delillo's novel, Underworld, honored by a number of prestigious awards is discussed. The novel represents the completion of a movement in his body of works away from his previous style, with its faith in representation and its pious humanism.

Tongue twisters ('Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers' or 'She sells sea shells by the sea shore') typically challenge the ability to produce consonants. I devised some sentences [...]

'I haven't done any statistical analysis,' David Lodge writes in Consciousness and the Novel (Harvard Univ. Press), 'but my impression is that a majority of literary novels published in the [...]

While the narrator in All the King's Men has received much critical attention, his partner in the act of communication has been rather neglected. Yet not only are the two [...]

Across the developing world, mobile technology is being used in novel ways. Its evolution reminds, us that innovation is not just the incremental improvement of technology, but the advancement of [...]

'Experiment 6. Apparatus: Smith & Wesson Model 13.' Having written thus, Professor Hillabin began searching for the gun among the piles of books, papers and assignments. His students j believed [...]