African Literature in Transition: Volume 5
Genres of African Literature, 1900-2020
Will be published approx. on 28. February 2026
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-1-009-69464-3 (ISBN)
Description
This volume offers literary histories and analyses of a wide range of genres in African literature and verbal arts. It provides a holistic and accessible presentation of African literary history that incorporates different types of texts, different regions of the continent, and different languages (English, French, Swahili, Hausa). Both genres with a longer history and those with more recent histories in Africa receive attention. The genres covered include memoirs, travelogues, Shairi, protest poetry, activist theatre, dictator novels, child soldier narratives, prison writing, speculative fiction, market literature, environmental literature, graphic narrative, and queer writing. The volume furnishes overviews of other genres such as campus narrative, crime fiction, and romance. Genres belonging to popular culture as well as those associated with high literary forms are discussed. This collection of literary histories also shows how popular and high literary cultures have intersected and diverged in different locations across Africa since the early 1900s.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
729 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-69464-3 (9781009694643)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Moradewun Adejunmobi
African Literature in Transition: Volume 5
Genres of African Literature, 1900-2020
E-Book
01/2026
Cambridge University Press
€111.99
Available for download
Person
Moradewun Adejunmobi is a professor at the University of California, Davis and author of JJ Rabearivelo, Literature and Lingua Franca in Colonial Madagascar (1996), and Vernacular Palaver: Imaginations of the Local and Non-Native Languages in West Africa (2004). She is a co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of African Literature (2019).
Content
Introduction Moradewun Adejunmobi; Part I. Micro-Histories of Genres: 1. The African dictator novel Gichingiri Ndigirigi; 2. Endless war: African child soldier narratives Joya Uraizee; 3. The human, the nonhuman, and socio-ecological justice: a historical survey of African environmental literature Sule Emmanuel Egya; 4. Waves of fury: South African protest poetry since 1950 Tom Penfold; 5. Francophone West African activist theatre in transition Heather Jeanne Denyer; 6. A treatise on Zimbabwean theatre genres: domestic drama and protest theatre Samuel Ravengai; Part II. Genres in Transition: 7. African travel writing Maureen Amimo; 8. Parallel existences and manifold ancestries: the multiplicity of the Swahili Shairi genre Clarissa Vierke; 9. African prison writings Isaac Ndlovu; 10. Autobiographical genres in French language writing from Africa Susanne Gehrmann; 11. Queer as a genre in African literatures Gibson Ncube; 12. Market literature: from Onitsha origins to Ghanaian progeny Esther de Bruijn; Part III. Experiments with Genre: 13. The graphic narrative as site of cultural negotiation Charlotta Salmi; 14. Experimental writing: language, genre, text Alena Rettova; 15. The reemergence of African science and speculative fiction (ASF) Peter J. Maurits; 16. Genre in African online creative writing Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang; 17. Indigenous Hausa fiction and transmediality in Northern Nigeria Umma Musa Aliyu.