Download or read book Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1994-09-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

Download or read book Half of a Yellow Sun written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-10-29 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With her award-winning debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was heralded by the Washington Post Book World as the “21st century daughter” of Chinua Achebe. Now, in her masterly, haunting new novel, she recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s. With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy to Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school, and in whose living room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. Odenigbo’s beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology teacher, is running away from her parents’ world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father’s business; and Kainene’s English lover, Richard, forms a bridge between their two worlds. As we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, the Biafran secession and the subsequent war, Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place. Epic, ambitious and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a more powerful, dramatic and intensely emotional picture of modern Africa than any we have had before.

Download or read book Oral Literature in Africa written by Ruth Finnegan and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.

Download or read book Purple Hibiscus written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most vital and original novelists of her generation.” —Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker From the bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating. As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together. Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.

Download or read book Literature of Africa written by Douglas Killam and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2004-11-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As more works of African Literature are being incorporated into the Language Arts and Cultural Studies curriculum, it becomes increasingly important to offer students and educators a meaningful context in which to explore these works. As part of Greenwood's Literature as Windows to World Culture series, this volume introduces readers to the cultural concerns of 10 of Africa's most reknowned writers. Written in clear accessible language, close analysis is given for 14 novels, including Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and Paton's Cry the Beloved Country, chosen because of their literary importance and the frequency with which they are assigned. The ten analysis chapters each begin with a brief account of the authors' lives and their writing careers, noting especially the experiences and influences which have shaped their writing. Following this section is a major essay on their most prominent and best known work. Discussion of the historical and cultural issues in the novels is integrated into the literary commentary. Students will gain not a deeper appreciation for the fiction, but a more solid understanding of the core historical issues and cultural concerns that influence and shape the writing. The Introduction outlines the general history and development of Sub-Saharan African Literature. The colonial experiences and postcolonial struggles, the principal subject matter of African writers, differs from region to region. The geographic organization of this guide into West, East and South Africa reflects these different perspectives. Each section ends with a list of critical works that will assist readers and researchers further their understanding of the authors and their works. Short biographical sketches on 80 authors are also provided to expand readers' contact with African literature. The index assists users in identifying not only title and authors but also major themes and topics that the writings reveal.

Download or read book Africa Writes Back written by James Currey and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2008 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 17 June 2008 is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart by Heinemann. This provided the impetus for the foundation of the African Writers Series in 1962 with Chinua Achebe as the Editorial Adviser.'The book is therefore not only the story of a publishing enterprise of great significance; it is also a large part of the story of African literature and its dissemination in the latter half of the twentieth century. The manuscript is full of the drama of that enterprise, the drama of dealing with the mother house, William Heinemann, of dealing with the often intractable political constraints dominating the intellectual space across Africa, and not least of all dealing with the writers themselves - with their ambitions, their temperaments, their financial needs and, at time, their perception of a colonial relationship between themselves and a European publishing house.' - Clive Wake, Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages, University of Kent at Canterbury.

Download or read book African Literature in French written by Dorothy S. Blair and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1976-11-18 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1976 book provides both a historical survey and a critical analysis of the literature in French from West and Equatorial Africa. Professor Blair begins by discussing the social, educational and political influences which led to the formation of the Negritude movement and to a flowering of French-African creative writing. This historical approach is then complemented by a study of the different literary genres. She traces the evolution of the first manifestations of literary activity in French by African writers, the written folk-tale, fable and short story, from the oral tradition of the indigenous culture, and the eventual appearance of the novel with a legendary or historical theme. The origins of French-African drama are considered for the first time, and the work of the minor poets analysed. Finally, Professor Blair attempts a definition of the French-African novel, and studies examples from three major periods from the 1930s onwards.

Download or read book Africa Writes Back to Self written by Evan M. Mwangi and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-07-02 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The profound effects of colonialism and its legacies on African cultures have led postcolonial scholars of recent African literature to characterize contemporary African novels as, first and foremost, responses to colonial domination by the West. In Africa Writes Back to Self, Evan Maina Mwangi argues instead that the novels are primarily engaged in conversation with each other, particularly over emergent gender issues such as the representation of homosexuality and the disenfranchisement of women by male-dominated governments. He covers the work of canonical novelists Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, NguÅgiÅ wa Thiong'o, and J. M. Coetzee, as well as popular writers such as Grace Ogot, David Maillu, Promise Okekwe, and Rebeka Njau. Mwangi examines the novels' self-reflexive fictional strategies and their potential to refigure the dynamics of gender and sexuality in Africa and demote the West as the reference point for cultures of the Global South.

Download or read book No Longer at Ease written by Chinua Achebe and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Obi Okonkwo is an idealistic young man who, thanks to the privileges of an education in Britain, has now returned to Nigeria for a job in the civil service. However in his new role he finds that the way of government seems to be backhanders and corruption. Obi manages to resist the bribes that are offered to him, but when he falls in love with an unsuitable girl - to the disapproval of his parents - he sinks further into emotional and financial turmoil. The lure of easy money becomes harder to refuse, and Obi becomes caught in a trap he cannot escape. Showing a man lost in cultural limbo, and a Nigeria entering a new age of disillusionment, No Longer at Ease concludes Achebe's remarkable trilogy charting three generations of an African community under the impact of colonialism, the first two volumes of which are Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.

Download or read book Out Of Africa written by Isak Dinesen and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Out of Africa, author Isak Dinesen takes a wistful and nostalgic look back on her years living in Africa on a Kenyan coffee plantation. Recalling the lives of friends and neighbours—both African and European—Dinesen provides a first-hand perspective of colonial Africa. Through her obvious love of both the landscape and her time in Africa, Dinesen’s meditative writing style deeply reflects the themes of loss as her plantation fails and she returns to Europe. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.

Download or read book Urban Legends Colonial Myths written by James Ogude and published by Africa Research and Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of African Popular Culture written by Grace A Musila and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-15 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook brings together an international team of scholars from different disciplines to reflect on African popular cultural imaginaries. These imaginaries – in the sense of cultural productions, contexts, consumers, producers, platforms, and the material, affective and discursive resources they circulate – are influential in shaping African realities. Collectively, the chapters assembled in this handbook index the genres, methods, mediums, questions and encounters that preoccupy producers, consumers and scholars of African popular cultural forms across a range of geohistorical and temporal contexts. Drawing on forms such as newspaper columns, televised English Premier League football, speculative arts, romance fiction, comedy, cinema, music and digital genres, the contributors explore the possibilities and ambiguities unleashed by the production, circulation, consumption, remediation and critique of these forms. Among the questions explored across these essays are the freedoms and constraints of popular genres; the forms of self-making, pleasure and harm that these imaginaries enable; the negotiations of multiple moral regimes in everyday life; and, inevitably, the fecund terrain of contradictions definitive of many popular forms, which variously enable and undermine world-making. An authoritative scholarly resource on popular culture in Africa, this handbook is an essential read for students and scholars of African culture, society and media.

Download or read book Chaka written by Thomas Mofolo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Mofolo's final novel and masterpiece, Chaka captures the phenomenal rise and fall of the great Zulu king. One of the earliest modern literary classics from Southern Africa, Chaka, is the tragic tale of a warrior-king and his insatiable hunger for power. Told in a mythic style, Chaka follows the torments of the Zulu king's early life, his rapid ascension to the throne, and the prophesied events that lead to his downfall. 'Chaka is a beautifully dark and twisted take on the true life story of the Zulu King ... built around one of the most enigmatic and memorable literary figures you'd ever encounter.' Ainehi Edoro

Download or read book Theories of Africans written by Christopher L. Miller and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Situating literature and anthropology in mutual interrogation, Miller's...book actually performs what so many of us only call for. Nowhere have all the crucial issues been brought together with the sort of critical sophistication it displays."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ". . . a superb cross-disciplinary analysis."—Y. Mudimbe

Download or read book Literature and Culture in Global Africa written by Tanure Ojaide and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging and interrogating the idea of a ‘Global Africa’, this book examines how African literary and cultural productions have changed over the years due to the social and political influences brought about by increased globalisation. Tanure Ojaide takes a variety of European theoretical concepts and applies these to African literature, oral traditions, culture, sexuality, political leadership, environmentalism, and advocacy, demonstrating the universality of the African experience. Challenging African literary artists and scholars to think creatively about the future of the culture and literature, this new collection of literary and cultural criticism from scholar-writer Tanure Ojaide is an essential read for students and scholars of African literature and culture.

Download or read book The House of Hunger written by Dambudzo Marechera and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-02-08 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This explosive, award-winning novella of growing up in colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), told in exquisite, imaginative prose, touches the readers nerve through the authors harrowing portrait of lives disrupted by white settlers, a young disillusioned black man, and individual suffering in the 1960s and 1970s. Marecheras raw, piercing writings secured his place in African literature as a stylistic innovator and rebel commentator of the ghetto condition. While The House of Hunger is the centerpiece of this collection, readers are also treated to a series of short sketches in which Marechera, with angry humor, further navigates themes of madness, violence, despair, and survival.

Download or read book Women Literature and Development in Africa written by Anthonia C. Kalu and published by Africa World Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a powerful exploration of contemporary African scholars' efforts to re-chart and preserve the evolution of African thought on development, Kalu brings together various dominant perspectives on Africa's entry and participation in the international arena. Using African verbal arts to bring women into ongoing discussions about the search for feasible paradigms for African development, as well as world assumptions about Africa and African women, Kalu successfully elucidates the encounter between African and colonists' languages and narrative traditions.