Nigerian Speculative Fiction
The Evolution
Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke
This book is an exciting addition to a gap in non-Western genre studies of African fiction. It challenges the dominant canonicity of African literature, overshadowed by texts concerned with the colonial discourse and ‘writing back’ while exploring speculative themes in Nigerian fiction and writings that stem from an African cosmology and culture.
The book examines important twentieth-century precursors of the post-millennial ‘boom’ in Nigerian Speculative Fiction (SF), reading texts that were omitted from the Nigerian literary canon developed in the 1960s. It combines of the analysis of recent fiction and criticism with a historical overview of the development of the under-researched area of Nigerian SF. Through these readings, the author demonstrates the range of concerns explored by Nigerian SF including futurism, posthumanism, horror, fantasy and science fiction, among others. This book argues that these narratives exceed the binary implicitly sustained by the texts that write back to the West and offers new readings of contemporary Nigerian SF; works that imagine futures different to the past and present conditions imposed by capitalism, colonialism and imperialism.
Providing new theoretical tools and concepts, this book in the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series will be of interest to readers and scholars working in the fields of African studies, African culture and society, literature and language, interdisciplinary literary studies, area studies, literary criticism and genre studies.
Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke’s PhD is from Manchester Metropolitan University. His research focuses on the impact of postcolonial theory on the evolution of African speculative fiction. His recent publication includes a collection of his short stories, Haunted Grave and Other Stories.
‘The Euro-American formation of African and Nigerian literary canons favoured writers and works most consonant with the ideology and goals of capitalist neo-colonialism, marginalising and excluding African languages, literatures of Négritude – and speculative fiction. By reconnecting contemporary Nigerian sf (Nnedi Okorafor, Tade Thompson, Chigozie Obioma, Akwaeke Emezi) to its forebears (D.O. Fágúnwà, Amos Tutuola), Ezeiyoke powerfully demonstrates that the twenty-first century ‘emergence’ of African sf was actually a making-visible of something much older and more deeply rooted. An essential intervention.’
Mark Bould, UWE Bristol
‘The key thing to realize here is that this book hasn’t really been written yet. When we think of competition, there isn’t any. This is a needed text, and I recommend it enthusiastically.’
Ian P. MacDonald, Florida Atlantic University.
Table of Contents
Part One – Strictures and Constraints
1. The Evolution of African SF: Contemporary Debates
2. The Canon of Nigerian Literature from the 1960s and the place of Nigerian SF
3. Voices Left Behind: Exploring the Pre-existing Nigerian SF Tradition before the Makerere Conference
Part Two – Possibilities of Emergency
4. Aliens as an archetype of estrangement and the double heritage of emerging Nigerian SF
5. Capitalism and the politics of love: mutual interdependence as the onto-ethical revisions within Nigerian SF
Conclusion
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©CoFutures, 2024