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book: The People's Right to the Novel
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The People's Right to the Novel

War Fiction in the Postcolony
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2014

About this book

This study offers a literary history of the war novel in Africa. Coundouriotis argues that this genre, aimed more specifically at African readers than the continent’s better-known bildungsroman tradition, nevertheless makes an important intervention in global understandings of human rights.

The African war novel lies at the convergence of two sensibilities it encounters in European traditions: the naturalist aesthetic and the discourse of humanitarianism, whether in the form of sentimentalism or of human rights law. Both these sensibilities are present in culturally hybrid forms in the African war novel, reflecting its syncretism as a narrative practice engaged with the colonial and postcolonial history of the continent.

The war novel, Coundouriotis argues, stakes claims to collective rights that contrast with the individualism of the bildungsroman tradition. The genre is a form of people’s history that participates in a political struggle for the rights of the dispossessed.

Author / Editor information

Coundouriotis Eleni :

Eleni Coundouriotis is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut.

Reviews

“The People’s Right to the Novel offers an extraordinarily rich and original way of shifting the ground of Africanist criticism, and it is certain to be an influential addition to the field. Not only does it open up a broad frame of inquiry to be explored in further detail, but it demands fresh thinking about the relationship between authors, critics, and “the people” of the postcolony. By elegantly combining ideology critique with aesthetic analysis, it revitalizes both.” --- “The People’s Right to the Novel combines a clear thesis with a painstaking and perceptive discussion of the individual authors and their works.”---—Wendy Griswold, Northwestern University --- Eleni Coundouriotis’s latest book so exudes theoretical newness that one reads even the bibliography with pencil at the ready. --- In powerful readings of a vast literature of war in Africa, with impeccable scholarship and painstaking attention to historical detail, Eleni Coundouriotis has reconstructed a history of the African novel from below, a history that puts "the people" and their political and literary claims of rights to representation--both in the postcolonial state and its national literature--at the center of the story. The book adds vital new perspectives on the interdependent developments of humanitarian thinking and Naturalism, adding necessary nuance to our understanding of the relationships among literature, human rights, and humanitarianism.---—Joseph R. Slaughter, Columbia University --- Tackling the difficult and urgent issue of wars in Africa and their representation by insider-authors, Coundouriotis’s text will provoke debate and raise interest in a rich but still under-researched field of study by means of wide ranging, trenchant analyses.---—Annie Gagiano, Professor Emeritus, Stellenbosch University

Topics

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    v
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    List of Figures

    vii
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    Acknowledgments

    ix
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    Introduction: Naturalism, Humanitarianism, and the Fiction of War

    1
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    1. “No Innocents and No Onlookers”: The Uses of the Past in the Novels of Mau Mau

    34
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    2. Toward a People’s History: The Novels of the Nigerian Civil War

    98
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    3. “Wondering Who the Heroes Were”: Zimbabwe’s Novels of Atrocity

    152
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    4. Contesting the New Authenticity: Contemporary War Fiction in Africa

    220
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    Afterword

    261
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    Notes

    275
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    Works Cited

    311
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    Index

    331
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
July 20, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9780823262359
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823262359
eBook ISBN: 9780823262359
Keywords for this book
Human Rights; humanitarianism; War novel; world novel; postcolonial studies; people's history; naturalism; Africa; gender; war
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