Simon Gikandi's study offers a comprehensive analysis of all the published works of the influential Kenyan dramatist, novelist, and critic Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Gikandi traces Ngugi's literary career from the 1960s through to his role in shaping a radical culture in East Africa in the 1970s and his imprisonment and exile in the 1980s. Focusing also on Ngugi's engagement with nationalism, empire and postcoloniality, this book provides fresh insight into the author's life and the historical and cultural context surrounding his work.

Product Description: The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book covers all the key historical and cultural issues in the field. The Encyclopedia contains over 600 entries covering criticism and theory, African literature's development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers and their texts...read more

Product Description: The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945 challenges the conventional belief that the English-language literary traditions of East Africa are restricted to the former British colonies of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania...read more

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Product Description: Gikandi explores the politics of identity to analyze how the colonial experience inspired narrative forms that changed the nature of the English identity by surveying the British imperial tradition since the nineteenth century. He provides detailed readings of the works of Trollope, Carlyle, and others; through the narratives of imperial women travelers such as Mary Kingsley and Mary Seacole; and through Africanist texts by Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and postcolonialists such as Salman Rushdie and Joan Riley...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In Simon Gikandi's view, Caribbean literature, and postcolonial literature more generally, negotiate an uneasy relationship with the concepts of modernism and modernity--a relationship in which the Caribbean writer, unable to escape a history encoded by Europe, accepts the challenge of rewriting it...read more

Product Description: Gikandi places Achebe's writing in a wider context than former books by integrating his critical and theoretical writings. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Simon Gikandi provides critical analysis on the African novel. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)