African literature

WRITTEN BY
Elizabeth Ann Wynne Gunner See All Contributors
Lecturer in African Literature, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Author
of A Handbook for Teaching African Literature.

African literature, the body of traditional oral and written literatures in Afro-Asiatic and African
languages together with works written by Africans in European languages. Traditional written
literature, which is limited to a smaller geographic area than is oral literature, is most characteristic
of those sub-Saharan cultures that have participated in the cultures of the Mediterranean. In
particular, there are written literatures in both Hausa and Arabic, created by the scholars of what is
now northern Nigeria, and the Somali people have produced a traditional written literature. There
are also works written in Geʿez (Ethiopic) and Amharic, two of the languages of Ethiopia, which is
the one part of Africa where Christianity has been practiced long enough to be considered
traditional. Works written in European languages date primarily from the 20th century onward. The
literature of South Africa in English and Afrikaans is also covered in a separate article, South African
literature. See also African theatre.

The relationship between oral and written traditions and in particular between oral and modern
written literatures is one of great complexity and not a matter of simple evolution. Modern African
literatures were born in the educational systems imposed by colonialism, with models drawn from
Europe rather than existing African traditions. But the African oral traditions exerted their own
influence on these literatures.

Oral Traditions

The nature of storytelling

The storyteller speaks, time collapses, and the members of the audience are in the presence of
history. It is a time of masks. Reality, the present, is here, but with explosive emotional images
giving it a context. This is the storyteller’s art: to mask the past, making it mysterious, seemingly
inaccessible. But it is inaccessible only to one’s present intellect; it is always available to one’s heart
and soul, one’s emotions. The storyteller combines the audience’s present waking state and its past
condition of semiconsciousness, and so the audience walks again in history, joining its forebears.
And history, always more than an academic subject, becomes for the audience a collapsing of time.
History becomes the audience’s memory and a means of reliving of an indeterminate and deeply
obscure past.

Storytelling is a sensory union of image and idea, a process of re-creating the past in terms of the
present; the storyteller uses realistic images to describe the present and fantasy images to evoke
and embody the substance of a culture’s experience of the past. These ancient fantasy images are
the culture’s heritage and the storyteller’s bounty: they contain the emotional history of the
culture, its most deeply felt yearnings and fears, and they therefore have the capacity to elicit
strong emotional responses from members of audiences. During a performance, these envelop
contemporary images—the most unstable parts of the oral tradition, because they are by their
nature always in a state of flux—and thereby visit the past on the present.

It is the task of the storyteller to forge the fantasy images of the past into masks of the realistic
images of the present, enabling the performer to pitch the present to the past, to visualize the
present within a context of—and therefore in terms of—the past. Flowing through this potent
emotional grid is a variety of ideas that have the look of antiquity and ancestral sanction. Story
occurs under the mesmerizing influence of performance—the body of the performer, the music of
her voice, the complex relationship between her and her audience. It is a world unto itself, whole,
with its own set of laws. Images that are unlike are juxtaposed, and then the storyteller reveals—to
the delight and instruction of the members of the audience—the linkages between them that
render them homologous. In this way the past and the present are blended; ideas are thereby
generated, forming a conception of the present. Performance gives the images their context and
ensures the audience a ritual experience that bridges past and present and shapes contemporary
life.

Storytelling is alive, ever in transition, never hardened in time. Stories are not meant to be
temporally frozen; they are always responding to contemporary realities, but in a timeless fashion.
Storytelling is therefore not a memorized art. The necessity for this continual transformation of the
story has to do with the regular fusing of fantasy and images of the real, contemporary world.
Performers take images from the present and wed them to the past, and in that way the past
regularly shapes an audience’s experience of the present. Storytellers reveal connections between
humans—within the world, within a society, within a family—emphasizing an interdependence and
the disaster that occurs when obligations to one’s fellows are forsaken. The artist makes the
linkages, the storyteller forges the bonds, tying past and present, joining humans to their gods, to
their leaders, to their families, to those they love, to their deepest fears and hopes, and to the
essential core of their societies and beliefs.

The language of storytelling includes, on the one hand, image, the patterning of image, and the
manipulation of the body and voice of the storyteller and, on the other, the memory and present
state of the audience. A storytelling performance involves memory: the recollection of each
member of the audience of his experiences with respect to the story being performed, the memory
of his real-life experiences, and the similar memories of the storyteller. It is the rhythm of
storytelling that welds these disparate experiences, yearnings, and thoughts into the images of the
story. And the images are known, familiar to the audience. That familiarity is a crucial part of
storytelling. The storyteller does not craft a story out of whole cloth: she re-creates the ancient
story within the context of the real, contemporary, known world. It is the metaphorical relationship
between these memories of the past and the known images of the world of the present
that constitutes the essence of storytelling. The story is never history; it is built of the shards of
history. Images are removed from historical contexts, then reconstituted within the demanding
and authoritative frame of the story. And it is always a sensory experience, an experience of the
emotions. Storytellers know that the way to the mind is by way of the heart. The interpretative
effects of the storytelling experience give the members of the audience a refreshed sense of reality,
a context for their experiences that has no existence in reality. It is only when images of
contemporary life are woven into the ancient familiar images that metaphor is born and experience
becomes meaningful.

Stories deal with change: mythic transformations of the cosmos, heroic transformations of the
culture, transformations of the lives of everyman. The storytelling experience is always ritual,
always a rite of passage; one relives the past and, by so doing, comes to insight about present
life. Myth is both a story and a fundamental structural device used by storytellers. As a story, it
reveals change at the beginning of time, with gods as the central characters. As a storytelling tool
for the creation of metaphor, it is both material and method. The heroic epic unfolds within the
context of myth, as does the tale. At the heart of each of these genres is metaphor, and at the core
of metaphor is riddle with its associate, proverb. Each of these oral forms is characterized by a
metaphorical process, the result of patterned imagery. These universal art forms are rooted in the
specificities of the African experience.

The riddle
 A pot without an opening. (An egg.)
The silly man who drags his intestines. (A needle and thread.)

In the riddle, two unlike, and sometimes unlikely, things are compared. The obvious thing that
happens during this comparison is that a problem is set, then solved. But there is something more
important here, involving the riddle as a figurative form: the riddle is composed of two sets, and,
during the process of riddling, the aspects of each of the sets are transferred to the other. On the
surface it appears that the riddle is largely an intellectual rather than a poetic activity. But through
its imagery and the tension between the two sets, the imagination of the audience is also engaged.
As they seek the solution to the riddle, the audience itself becomes a part of the images and
therefore—and most significantly—of the metaphorical transformation.

This may not seem a very complex activity on the level of the riddle, but in this deceptively simple
activity can be found the essential core of all storytelling, including the interaction of imagery in
lyric poetry, the tale, and the epic. In the same way as those oral forms, the riddle works in a literal
and in a figurative mode. During the process of riddling, the literal mode interacts with the
figurative in a vigorous and creative way. It is that play between the literal and the figurative,
between reality and fantasy, that characterizes the riddle: in that relationship can be
found metaphor, which explains why it is that the riddle underlies other oral forms. The images
in metaphor by their nature evoke emotion; the dynamics of metaphor trap those emotions in the
images, and meaning is caught up in that activity. So meaning, even in such seemingly simple
operations as riddling, is more complex than it may appear.

The lyric

People were those who

Broke for me the string.
Therefore,
The place became like this to me,
On account of it,
Because the string was that which broke for me.
Therefore, 
The place does not feel to me,
As the place used to feel to me,
On account of it.
For,
The place feels as if it stood open before me,
Because the string has broken for me.
Therefore,
The place does not feel pleasant to me,
On account of it. 

(a San poem, from W.H.I. Bleek and L.C. Lloyd, Specimens of Bushman Folklore [1911])
The images in African lyric interact in dynamic fashion, establishing metaphorical relationships
within the poem, and so it is that riddling is the motor of the lyric. And, as in riddles, so also in
lyric: metaphor frequently involves and invokes paradox. In the lyric, it is as if the singer were
stitching a set of riddles into a single richly textured poem, the series of riddling connections
responsible for the ultimate experience of the poem. The singer organizes and controls the
emotions of the audience as he systematically works his way through the levels of the poem,
carefully establishing the connective threads that bring the separate metaphorical sets into the
poem’s totality. None of the separate riddling relationships exists divorced from those others that
compose the poem. As these riddling relationships interact and interweave, the poet brings the
audience to a close, intense sense of the meaning of the poem. Each riddling relationship provides
an emotional clue to the overall design of the poem. Further clues to meaning are discovered by
the audience in the rhythmical aspects of the poem, the way the poet organizes the images, the
riddling organization itself, and the sound of the singer’s voice as well as the movement of the
singer’s body. As in the riddle, everything in the lyric is directed to the revelation of metaphor.

The proverb

Work the clay while it is fresh.

Wisdom killed the wise man.

The African proverb seems initially to be a hackneyed expression, a trite leftover repeated until it

loses all force. But proverb is also performance, it is also metaphor, and it is in its performance and
metaphorical aspects that it achieves its power. In one sense, the experience of a proverb is similar
to that of a riddle and a lyric poem: different images are brought into a relationship that is novel,
that provides insight. When one experiences proverbs in appropriate contexts, rather than in
isolation, they come to life. In the riddle the poser provides the two sides of the metaphor. In
lyric poetry the two sides are present in the poem but in a complex way; the members of the
audience derive their aestheticexperience from comprehending that complexity. The words of the
proverb are by themselves only one part of the metaphorical experience. The other side of the
riddle is not to be found in the same way it is in the riddle and the lyric. The proverb establishes ties
with its metaphorical equivalent in the real life of the members of the audience or with the wisdom
of the past. The words of the proverb are a riddle waiting to happen. And when it happens, the
African proverb ceases to be a grouping of tired words.

The tale

The riddle, lyric, and proverb are the materials that are at the dynamic centre of the tale. The riddle
contains within it the possibilities of metaphor; and the proverb elaborates the metaphorical
possibilities when the images of the tale are made lyrical—that is, when they are rhythmically
organized. Such images are drawn chiefly from two repertories: from the contemporary world
(these are the realistic images) and from the ancient tradition (these are the fantasy images).
These diverse images are brought together during a storytelling performance by their rhythmic
organization. Because the fantasy images have the capacity to elicit strong emotional reactions
from members of the audience, these emotions are the raw material that is woven into the image
organization by the patterning. The audience thereby becomes an integral part of the story by
becoming a part of the metaphorical process that moves to meaning. And meaning, therefore, is
much more complex than an obvious homily that may be readily available on the surface of the
tale.

This patterning of imagery is the main instrument that shapes a tale. In the simplest of tales, a
model is established, and then it is repeated in an almost identical way. In a Xhosa story an ogre
chases a woman and her two children. With each part of the story, as the ogre moves closer and as
the woman and her children are more intensely imperiled, a song organizes the emotions of
helplessness, of menace, and of terror, even as it moves the story on its linear path:

Qwebethe, Qwebethe, what do you want?

I’m leaving my food behind on the prairie,
I’m leaving it behind,
I’m leaving it behind.

With little more than a brief introduction and a quick close, the storyteller develops this tale. There
is an uninterrupted linear movement of a realistic single character fleeing from a fantasy ogre—
from a conflict to a resolution. But that fantasy and that reality are controlled by the lyrical centre
of the tale, and that seemingly simple mechanism provides the core for complexity. That linear
movement, even in the simplest stories, is subverted by a cyclical movement—in this case, the song
—and that is the engine of metaphor. It is the cyclical movement of the tale that makes it possible
to experience linear details and images in such a way that they become equated one with the
other. So it is that the simplest tale becomes a model for more-complex narratives. That lyrical
centre gives the tale a potential for development.

In a more complex tale, the storyteller moves two characters through three worlds, each of those
worlds seemingly different. But by means of that lyrical pulse, the rhythmical ordering of those
worlds brings them into such alignment that the members of the audience experience them as the
same. It is this discernment of different images as identical that results in complex structures,
characters, events, and meanings. And what brings those different images into this alignment is
poetry—more specifically, the metaphorical character of the lyrical poem. The very composition of
tales makes it possible to link them and to order them metaphorically. The possibilities of epic are
visible in the simplest of tales, and so also are the possibilities of the novel.

The trickster tale, as it does with so much of the oral tradition, provides insights into this matter of
the construction of stories. Masks are the weapons of the trickster: he creates illusions, bringing
the real world and the world of illusioninto temporary, shimmering proximity, convincing his dupe
of the reality of metaphor. That trickster and his antic activities are another way of describing the
metaphorical motor of storytelling.

Heroic poetry

 Hero who surpasses other heroes!

Swallow that disappears in the clouds,
Others disappearing into the heavens!
Son of Menzi!
Viper of Ndaba!
Erect, ready to strike,
It strikes the shields of men!
Father of the cock!
Why did it disappear over the mountains?
It annihilated men!
That is Shaka,
Son of Senzangakhona,
Of whom it is said, Bayede!
You are an elephant! 
(from a heroic poem dedicated to the Zulu chief Shaka)

It is in heroic poetry, or panegyric, that lyric and image come into their most obvious union. As in
the tale and as in the lyric, riddle, and proverb, the essence of panegyric is metaphor, although the
metaphorical connections are sometimes somewhat obscure. History is more clearly evident in
panegyric, but it remains fragmented history, rejoined according to the poetic intentions of the
bard. Obvious metaphorical connections are frequently made between historical personages or
events and images of animals, for example. The fantasy aspects of this kind of poetry are to be
found in its construction, in the merging of the real and the animal in metaphorical ways. It is
within this metaphorical context that the hero is described and assessed. As in other forms of oral
tradition, emotions associated with both historical and nonhistorical images are at the heart of
meaning in panegyric. It is the lyrical rhythm of panegyric that works such emotions into form. In
the process, history is reprocessed and given new meaning within the context of contemporary
experience. It is a dual activity: history is thereby redefined at the same time that it shapes
experiences of the present.

Among the Tuareg of western Africa, a stringed instrument often accompanies the creation of such

poetry, and the main composers are women. The Songhaihave mabe, the professional bards; they
are present at all rites of passage, celebrating, accompanying, and cushioning the transformation
being experienced. In Mauritania it is the iggiw (plural iggawen) who creates heroic poetry and
who plays the lute while singing the songs of the warriors. The diare(plural diarou) is the bard
among the Soninke. He goes to battle with the soldiers, urging them, placing their martial activities
within the context of history, building their acts within the genealogies of their family. Drums and
trumpets sometimes accompany the maroka among the Hausa. When a king is praised, the
accompaniment becomes orchestral. Yoruba bards chant the ijala, singing of lineage, and, with
the oriki, saluting the notable. Among the Hima of Uganda, the bard is the omwevugi. In the
evenings, he sings of the omugabe, the king, and of men in battle and of the cattle. The mbongi wa
ku pfusha is the bard among the Tonga of Mozambique. He too sings of the glories of the past,
creating poetry about chiefs and kings.

The images vary, their main organizing implement being the subject of the poem. It is the metrical
ordering of images, including sound and motion, that holds the poem together, not the narrative of
history.

The epic

In the epic can be found the merging of various frequently unrelated tales, the metaphorical
apparatus, the controlling mechanism found in the riddle and lyric, the proverb, and heroic poetry
to form a larger narrative. All of this centres on the character of the hero and a gradual revelation
of his frailty, uncertainties, and torments; he often dies, or is deeply troubled, in the process of
bringing the culture into a new dispensation often prefigured in his resurrection or his coming into
knowledge. The mythical transformation caused by the creator gods and culture heroes is
reproduced precisely in the acts and the cyclical, tortured movements of the hero.

An epic may be built around a genealogical system, with parts of it developed and embellished into
a story. The epic, like the heroic poem, contains historical references such as place-names and
events; in the heroic poem these are not greatly developed. When they are developed in an epic,
they are built not around history but around a fictional tale. The fictional tale ties the historical
episode, person, or place-name to the cultural history of the people. In an oral society,
oral genres include history (the heroic poem) and imaginative story (the tale). The epic combines
the two, linking the historical episode to the imaginative tale. Sometimes, myth is also a part of
epic, with emphasis on origins. The tale, the heroic poem, history, and myth are combined in the
epic. In an echo of the tale—where the emphasis is commonly on a central but always nonhistorical
character—a single historical or nonhistorical character is the centre of the epic. And at the core of
the epic is that same engine composed of the riddle, the lyric, and the proverb.

Much is frequently made of the psychology of this central character when he appears in the epic.
He is given greater detail than the tale character, given deeper dimension. The epic performer
remembers the great events and turning points of cultural history. These events change the
culture. In the epic these elements are tied to the ancient images of the culture (in the form of tale
and myth), an act that thereby gives these events cultural sanction. The tale and myth lend to the
epic (and, by inference, to history) a magical, supernatural atmosphere: all of nature is touched in
the Malagasy epic Ibonia; in the West African epic Sunjata, magic keeps Sumanguru in charge and
enables Sunjata to take over. It is a time of momentous change in the society. In Ibonia there are
major alterations in the relationship between men and women; in Sunjata and in the
epic Mwindo of the Nyanga people of Congo there are major political changes.

But, in Mwindo, why was Mwindo such a trickster? He was, after all, a great hero. And why must he
be taught by the gods after he has established his heroic credentials? Central to this question is the
notion of the transitional phase—of the betwixt and between, of the someone or something that
crosses yet exists between boundaries. There is a paradox in Mwindo’s vulnerability—how, after
all, can a hero be vulnerable?—but more important is his nonmoral energy during a period of
change. Mwindo is a liminal hero-trickster: he is liminal while he seeks his father, and then he
becomes liminal again at the hands of the gods. “Out there” is where the learning, the
transformation, occurs. The trickster energy befits and mirrors this in-between period, as no laws
are in existence. There is change and transformation, but it is guided by a vision: in the myths, it is
god’s vision for the cosmos; in the tales, it is the society’s vision for completeness; in the epics, it is
the hero’s vision for a new social dispensation.

The heroic epic is a grand blending of tale and myth, heroic poetry and history. These separate
genres are combined in the epic, and separate epics contain a greater or lesser degree of each—
history (and, to a lesser extent, poetry) is dominant in Sunjata, heroic poetry and tale in Ibonia, and
tale and myth (and, to a lesser extent, poetry) in Mwindo. Oral societies have these separate
categories: history, the imaginative tale, heroic poetry, myth, and epic. Epic, therefore, is not
simply history. History exists as a separate genre. The essential characteristic of epic is not that it is
history but that it combines history and tale, fact and fancy, and worlds of reality and fantasy. The
epic becomes the grand summation of the culture because it takes major turning points in history
(always with towering historical or nonhistorical figures who symbolize these turning points) and
links them to tradition, giving the changes their sanction. The epic hero may be revolutionary, but
he does not signal a total break with the past. Continuity is stressed in epic—in fact, it is as if the
shift in the direction of the society is a return to the paradigm envisioned by ancient cultural
wisdom. The effect of the epic is to mythologize history, to bring history to the essence of the
culture, to give history the resonance of the ancient roots of the culture as these are expressed in
myth, imaginative tale (and motif), and metaphor. In heroic poetry, history is fragmented, made
discontinuous. In epic these discontinuous images are given a new form, that of the imaginative
tale. And the etiological aspects of history (that is, the historical alteration of the society) are tied
to the etiology of mythology—in other words, the acts of the mortal hero are tied to the acts of the
immortals.

History is not the significant genre involved in the epic. It is instead tale and myth that organize the
images of history and give those images their meaning. History by itself has no significance: it
achieves significance when it is juxtaposed to the images of a tradition grounded in tales and
myths. This suggests the great value that oral societies place on the imaginative traditions: they are
entertaining, certainly, but they are also major organizing devices. As the tales take routine,
everyday experiences of reality and—by placing them in the fanciful context of conflict and
resolution with the emotion-evoking motifs of the past—give them a meaning and a completeness
that they do not actually have, so in epic is history given a form and a meaning that it does not
possess. This imaginative environment revises history, takes historical experiences and places them
into the context of the culture, and gives them cultural meaning. The epic is a blending, then, of the
ancient culture as it is represented through imaginative tradition with historical events and
personages. The divine trickster links heaven and earth, god and human; the epic hero does the
same but also links fancy and reality, myth and history, and cultural continuity and historical
disjunction.
What is graphically clear in the epics Ibonia and Sunjata is that heroic poetry, in the form of the
praise name, provides a context for the evolution of a heroic story. In both of those epics, the
panegyric forms a pattern, the effect of which is to tie the epic hero decisively and at the same time
to history and to the gods. Those epics, as well as Mwindo, dramatize the rite of passage of a
society or a culture: the hero’s movement through the familiar stages of the ritual becomes a
poetic metaphor for a like movement of the society itself. The tale at the centre of the epic may be
as straightforward as any tale in the oral tradition. But that tale is linked to a complex of other
tales, the whole given an illusion of poetic unity by the heroic poetry, which in turn provides a
lyrical rhythm.

Storytelling is the mythos of a society: at the same time that it is conservative, at the heart
of nationalism, it is the propelling mechanism for change. The struggle between the individual and
the group, between the traditions that support and defend the rights of the group and the sense of
freedom that argues for undefined horizons of the individual—this is the contest that characterizes
the hero’s dilemma, and the hero in turn is the personification of the quandary of the society itself
and of its individual members.

Oral Traditions And The Written Word

Oral and written storytelling traditions have had a parallel development, and in many ways they
have influenced each other. Ancient Egyptian scribes, early Hausa and Swahili copyists and
memorizers, and contemporary writers of popular novellas have been the obvious and crucial
transitional figures in the movement from oral to literary traditions. What happened among the
Hausa and Swahili was occurring elsewhere in Africa—among the Fulani, in northern Ghana among
the Guang, in Senegal among the Tukulor and Wolof, and in Madagascar and Somalia.

The linkage between oral tradition and the written word is most obviously seen in pulp literature:
the Onitsha market literature of Nigeria; the popular fiction of Accra, Ghana; the popular love and
detective literature of Nairobi; the visualizing of story in the complex comic strips sold in shops
in Cape Town. But the linkage is also a crucial characteristic of more-serious and more-complex
fiction. One cannot fully appreciate the works of Chinua Achebe or Ousmane Sembene without
placing them into the context of Africa’s classical period, its oral tradition. To be sure, the Arabic,
English, French, and Portuguese literary traditions along with Christianity and Islam and other
effects of colonialism in Africa also had a dynamic impact on African literature, but African writers
adapted those alien traditions and made them their own by placing them into these African
classical frames.

History and myth

As is the case with the oral tradition, written literature is a combination of the real and the
fantastic. It combines, on the one hand, the real (the contemporary world) and history (the realistic
world of the past) and, on the other, myth and hero, with metaphor being the agent of
transformation. This is the alchemy of the literary experience. Literature is atomized, fragmented
history. Transformation is the crucial activity of the story, its dynamic movement. The writer is
examining the relationship of the reader with the world and with history. In the process of this
examination, the writer invents characters and events that correspond to history but are not
history. At the centre of the story is myth, the fantasy element, a character or event that moves
beyond reality, though it is always rooted in the real. In the oral tale this is clearly the fantasy
character; so it is, in a complex, refracted way, in written literature.
Myth, which is deeply, intensely emotional, has to do with the gods and creation, with the essence
of a belief system; it is the imaged embodiment of a philosophical system, the giving of form to
thought and emotion. It is the driving force of a people, that emotional force that defines a people;
it is the everlasting form of a culture, hence its link to the gods, to the heavens, to the forever. In
mythic imagery is the embodiment of significant emotions—the hopes, fears, dreams, and
nightmares—of a people. History—the story of a people, their institutions, and their community—
is the way one likes to think things happened, in the real world. The hero is everyman, moving
through a change, a transformation, and so moving into the myth, the essence, of his history. He
thereby becomes a part of it, representative of it, embodying the culture. The hero is everyman
with myth inside him. He has been mythicized; story does that. Metaphor is the transformational
process, the movement from the real to the mythic and back again to the real—changed forever,
because one has become mythicized, because one has moved into history and returned with the
elixir.

In serious literary works, the mythic fantasy characters are often derived from the oral tradition;
such characters include the Fool in Sheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure (1961), Kihika
(and the mythicized Mugo) in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat (1967), Michael K in J.M.
Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K (1983), Dan and Sello in Bessie Head’s A Question of
Power(1973), Mustapha in al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ’s Season of Migration to the North (1966), and Nedjma
in Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma (1956). These are the ambiguous, charismatic shapers, those with
connections to the essence of history. In each case, a real-life character moves into a relationship
with a mythic character, and that movement is the movement of the hero’s becoming a part of
history, of culture. The real-life character is the hero who is in the process of being created: Samba
Diallo, Mugo, the doctor, Elizabeth, the narrator, or the four pilgrims. Myth is the stuff of which the
hero is being created. History is the real, the past, the world against which this transformation is
occurring and within which the hero will move. The real contemporary world is the place from
which the hero comes and to which the hero will return. Metaphor is the hero’s transformation.

The image of Africa, then, is that rich combination of myth and history, with the hero embodying
the essence of the history, or battling it, or somehow having a relationship with it by means of the
fantasy mythic character. It is in this relationship between reality and fantasy, the shaped and the
shaper, that the story has its power: Samba Diallo with the Fool, Mugo with Kihika (and the
mythicized Mugo), the doctor with Michael K, Elizabeth with Dan and Sello, the narrator with
Mustapha, the four pilgrims with Nedjma. This relationship, which is a harbinger of change, occurs
against a historical backdrop of some kind, but that backdrop is not the image of Africa: that image
is the relationship between the mythical character and African/European history.

The fantasy character provides access to history, to the essence of history. It is the explanation of
the historical background of the novels. The hero is the person who is being brought into a new
relationship with that history, be it the history of a certain area—Kenya or South Africa or Algeria,
for example—or of a wider area—of Africa generally or, in the case of A Question of Power, the
history of the world. These are the keys, then: the hero who is being shaped, the fantasy character
who is the ideological and spiritual material being shaped and who is also the artist or shaper, and
the larger issues, the historical panorama. The fantasy character is crucial: he is the artist’s palette,
the mythic element of the story. This character is the heart and the spiritual essence of history. This
is the Fool, Kihika, Michael K, Dan and Sello, Mustapha, Nedjma. Here is where reality and fantasy,
history and fiction blend, the confluence that is at the heart of story. The real-life character, the
hero, comes into a relationship with that mythic figure, and so the transformation begins, as the
hero moves through an intermediary period into history. It is the hero’s identification with history
that makes it possible for us to speak of the hero as a hero. This movement of a realistic character
into myth is metaphor, the blending of two seemingly unlike images. It is the power of the story,
the centre of the story, as Samba Diallo moves into the Fool, as Mugo moves into Kihika, as the
doctor moves into Michael K, as Elizabeth moves into Dan and Sello, as the narrator moves into
Mustapha, as the four pilgrims move into Nedjma. In this movement the oral tradition is revealed
as alive and well in literary works. The kinds of imagery used by literary storytellers and the
patterned way those reality and fantasy images are organized in their written works are not new.
The materials of storytelling, whether in the oral or written tradition, are essentially the same.

The influence of oral traditions on modern writers

Themes in the literary traditions of contemporary Africa are worked out frequently within the
strictures laid down by the imported religions Christianity and Islam and within the struggle
between traditional and modern, between rural and newly urban, between genders, and between
generations. The oral tradition is clearly evident in the popular literature of the marketplace and
the major urban centres, created by literary storytellers who are manipulating the original
materials much as oral storytellers do, at the same time remaining faithful to the tradition. Some of
the early writers sharpened their writing abilities by translating works into African languages;
others collected oral tradition; most experienced their apprenticeships in one way or another
within the contexts of living oral traditions.

There was a clear interaction between the deeply rooted oral tradition and the developing literary
traditions of the 20th century. That interaction is revealed in the placing of literary works into the
forms of the oral tradition. The impact of the epic on the novel, for instance, continues to influence
writers today. The oral tradition in the work of some of the early writers of the 20th century—
Amos Tutuola of Nigeria, D.O. Fagunwa in Yoruba, Violet Dube in Zulu, S.E.K. Mqhayiin Xhosa,
and Mario António in Portuguese—is readily evident. Some of these writings were merely
imitations of the oral tradition and were therefore not influential. Such antiquarians did little more
than retell, recast, or transcribe materials from the oral tradition. But the work of writers such as
Tutuola had a dynamic effect on the developing literary tradition; such works went beyond mere
imitation.

The most successful of the early African writers knew what could be done with the oral tradition;
they understood how its structures and images could be transposed to a literary mode, and they
were able to distinguish mimicry from organic growth. Guybon Sinxo explored the relationship
between oral tradition and writing in his popular Xhosa novels, and A.C. Jordan (in Xhosa), O.K.
Matsepe (in Sotho), and R.R.R. Dhlomo (in Zulu) built on that kind of writing, establishing new
relationships not only between oral and written materials but between the written and the written
—that is, between the writers of popular fiction and those writers who wished to create a more
serious form of literature. The threads that connect these three categories of artistic activity are
many, they are reciprocal, and they are essentially African, though there is no doubt that there was
also interaction with European traditions. Writers in Africa today owe much to African oral tradition
and to those authors who have occupied the space between the two traditions, in an area of
creative interaction.

Literatures In African Languages

Ethiopian

Ethiopian literatures are composed in several languages: Geʿez, Amharic, Tigrinya, Tigré, Oromo,

and Harari. Most of the literature in Ethiopia has been in Geʿez and Amharic. The classical language
is Geʿez, but over time Geʿez literature became the domain of a small portion of the population.
The more common spoken language, Amharic, became widespread when it was used for political
and religious purposes to reach a larger part of the population.
Geʿez was the literary language in Ethiopia from a very early period, most importantly from the
13th century. The Kebra nagast (Glory of Kings), written from 1314 to 1322, relates the birth of
Menelik—the son of Solomon and Makada, the queen of Sheba—who became the king of Ethiopia.
The work became a crucial part of the literature and culture of Ethiopia. Royal chronicles were
written, and there was some secular poetry. But most of the writing was religious in nature and
tone. Many translations of religious works were produced, as were works having to do with the
lives of Zagwe kings. In the 15th century, Ta’amra Maryam (The Miracles of Mary) was written, and
this was to become a major work in Ethiopia. There were also translations from Arabic.

At the end of the 19th century, missionaries brought the printing press to Ethiopia, and books were
published in Amharic. Early Amharic works such as Mist’ire Sillase (1910–11; “The Mystery of the
Trinity”) were rooted in traditional literary works. Newspapers in Amharic began to appear in 1924
and 1925, and there were translations of European literary works, including an Amharic translation
of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, by Gabra Giyorgis Terfe, that was to influence later
Amharic literary work.

Two writers created the foundation for the Amharic literary tradition. The first novel written in
Amharic was Libb-waled tarik (1908; “An Imagined Story”), by Afawark Gabra Iyasus. The oral
storytelling tradition is clearly in evidence in this novel, in which a girl disguised as a boy becomes
the centre of complex love involvements, the climax of which includes the conversion of a love-
smitten king to Christianity. Heruy Walda Sellasse, an Ethiopian foreign minister who became the
country’s first major writer, wrote two novels that are critical of child marriage and that extol
Christianity and Western technology. But he was also critical of the Christian church and proposed
in one of his novels its reform. In his second novel, Haddis alem (1924; “The New World”), he wrote
of a youth who is educated in Europe and who, when he returns to Ethiopia, experiences clashes
between his European education and the traditions of his past. Drama was also developed at this
time. Playwrights included Tekle Hawaryat Tekle Maryam, who wrote a comedy in 1911, Yoftahe
Niguse, and Menghistu Lemma, who wrote plays that satirized the conflict between tradition and
the West. Poetry included works in praise of the Ethiopian emperor. Gabra Egzi’abeher frequently
took an acerbic view of traditional life and attitudes in his poetry.

After World War II, important writers continued to compose works in Amharic. Mekonnin
Indalkachew wrote Silsawi Dawit (1949–50; “David III”), Ye-dem zemen (1954–1955; “Era of
Blood”), and T’aytu Bit’ul (1957–58), all historical novels. Girmachew Tekle Hawaryat wrote the
novel Araya (1948–49), about the journeying of the peasant Araya to Europe to be educated and
his struggle to decide whether to remain there or return to Africa. One of Ethiopia’s most popular
novels, it explores generational conflict as well as the conflict between tradition and
modernism. Kabbada Mika’el became a significant playwright, biographer, and historian. Other
writers also dealt with the conflict between the old and the new, with issues of social justice, and
with political problems. Central themes in post-World War II Amharic literature are the relationship
between humans and God, the difficulties of life, and the importance of humility and acceptance.
Kabbada Mika’el wrote drama reinforcing Christian values, attacking materialism, and exploring
historical events. Taddasa Liban wrote short stories that examine the relationship between the old
and the new in Ethiopian society. Asras Asfa Wasan wrote poetry and historical novels about
political events, including the military coup attempted against Emperor Haile Selassie I in December
1960. Writers such as Mengistu Gedamu and P’awlos Nyonyo became more and more concerned in
their works with social issues, and the widespread struggle between tradition and modernism was
debated. Novelists looked further afield and wrote about apartheid in South Africa and the African
nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba. At the turn of the 21st century there was also a concern with
preserving traditional materials in Amharic.

Hausa
The first novels written in Hausa were the result of a competition launched in 1933 by the
Translation Bureau in northern Nigeria. One year later the bureau published Muhammadu
Bello’s Gandoki, in which its hero, Gandoki, struggles against the British colonial regime. Bello does
in Gandoki what many writers were doing in other parts of Africa during this period: he
experiments with form and content. His novel blends the Hausa oral tradition and the novel,
resulting in a story patterned on the heroic cycle; it also introduces a strong thread of Islamic
history. Didactic elements, however, are awkwardly interposed and severely
dilute Gandoki’s aesthetic content (as often happened in other similarly experimental African
novels). But Bello’s efforts would eventually give rise to a more sophisticated tradition of novel
writing in Hausa. His experimentation would also find its most successful expression in Amos
Tutola’s English-language novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952).

It is possible that written Hausa goes back as far as the 14th or 15th century. Arabic writing among
the Hausa dates from the end of the 15th century. Early poets included Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh and
Muhammad al-Barnāwī. Other early writers in Arabic were Abdullahi Sikka and Sheikh Jibrīl ibn
ʿUmar. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Hausa language was written in an
Arabic script called ajami. In 1903, under the influence of the British, the Latin alphabet was added.
Nana Asma’u wrote poetry, primarily religious, in Arabic, Hausa, and Fula in Arabic ajami script.

Islamic Hausa poetry was a continuation of Arabic classical poetry. There was also secular poetry,
including the war song of Abdullahi dan Fodio. Usman dan Fodio, Abdullahi’s older brother and the
founder of the Fulani empire in the first decade of the 19th century, wrote Wallahi Wallahi (“By
God, By God”), which dealt with the clash between religion and contemporary political reality.
Social problems were also considered by Alhaji Umaru in his poem Wakar talauci da wadata (1903;
“Song of Poverty and of Wealth”). There was poetic reaction to the presence of British colonial
forces: Malam Shi’itu’s Bakandamiya (“Hippo-Hide Whip”) and Alhaji Umaru’s Zuwan
nasara (“Arrival of the Christians”). Much poetry dealt with the Prophet Muhammad and other
Islamic leaders. There was mystical poetry as well, especially among the Sufi. Religious and secular
poetry continued through the 20th century and included the work of Garba Affa, Sa’adu Zungur,
Mudi Sipikin, Na’ibi Sulaimanu Wali, and Aliyu Na Mangi, a blind poet from Zaria. Salihu Kontagora
and Garba Gwandu emphasized the need for an accumulation of knowledge in the contemporary
world. Mu’azu Hadeja wrote didactic poetry. Religious and didactic poetry continue to be written
among the Hausa.

The novel Shaihu Umar, by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, a prime minister of the Federation of Nigeria,
is set in a Hausa village and Egypt. Jiki magayi (1955; “You Will Pay for the Injustice You Caused”),
also a Translation Bureau prizewinner, was written by Rupert East and J. Tafida Wusasa. It is a novel
of love, and it moves from realism to fantasy. Idon matambayi (“The Eye of the Inquirer”), by
Muhammadu Gwarzo, and Ruwan bagaja (1957; The Water of Cure), by Alhaji Abubakar Imam,
mingle African and Western oral tradition with realism. Nagari na kowa (1959; “Good to
Everyone”), by Jabiru Abdullahi, is the story of Salihi, who comes to represent traditional Islamic
virtues in a world in which such virtues are endangered. Nuhu Bamali’s Bala da Babiya(1954; “Bala
and Babiya”) deals with conflicts in an urban dwelling. Ahmadu Ingawa’s Iliya ʿdam
Maikarfi (1959; The Story of Iliya Dam Maikarfi) has to do with Iliya, a sickly boy who is cured by
angels and then embarks on a crusade of peace. Sa’idu Ahmed Daura’s Tauraruwar hamada (1959;
“Star of the Desert”) centres on Zulkaratu, who is kidnapped and taken to a ruler; it is a story with
folkloric elements. Da’u fataken dare (“Da’u, the Nocturnal Merchants”), by Tanko Zango, deals
with robbers who live in a forest; the story is told with much fantasy imagery. In Umaru
Dembo’s Tauraruwa mai wutsiya (1969; “The Comet”), Kilba, a boy, travels into space.

Hausa drama has been influenced by the oral tradition. Dramatists include Aminu Kano, Abubakar
Tunau, Alhaji Muhammed Sada, Adamu dan Goggo, and Dauda Kano. In the 1980s there began to
appear littattafan soyayya(“books of love”), popular romances by such writers as Bilkisu Ahmed
Funtuwa (Allura cikin ruwa [1994; “Needle in a Haystack”], Wa ya san gobe? [1996; “Who Knows
What Tomorrow Will Bring?”], and Ki yarda da ni [1997; “Agree with Me”]) and Balaraba Ramat
Yakubu (Budurwar zuciya [1987; “Young at Heart”], Alhaki kuykuyo ne [1990; “Retribution Is
Inescapable”], and Wa zai auri jahila? [1990; “Who Will Marry the Ignorant Woman?”]). These
works deal with the experiences of Hausa women and address such subjects as polygamy, women
and education, and forced marriages.

Shona

Feso (1956), a historical novel, was the first literary work to be published in Shona. An account of
the invasion of the Rozwi kingdom and an expression of longing for the traditional past, it was
written by Solomon M. Mutswairo. Another early novel, Nzvengamutsvairo (1957; “Dodge the
Broom”), by Bernard T.G. Chidzero, has to do with themes that dominate prose writing in Shona:
the attempt to remain true to Shona tradition, the breaking down of Shona culture, the ugly
aspects of Western ideas, and the Christian who attempts to blend past and present. In 1959
Mutswairo’s novel Murambiwa Goredema (“Murambiwa, the Son of Goredema”; Eng.
trans. Murambiwa Goredema) was published; it depicts the conflict between the African past and
the urbanized, Westernized, and Christianized contemporary world, with an emphasis on the need
to establish roots within the reality of the world as it is. Also in 1959 John Marangwanda published
a novel, Kumazivandadzoka (“Who Goes There Never Comes Back”), which describes the effects of
Western-style education and the consequent alienation from traditional society: Saraoga, a boy, is
attracted to the city, becomes corrupted, changes his name, and is arrested and jailed. He again
changes his name, having renounced his mother, who nevertheless continues to seek him.
Education is also a danger in Xavier S. Marimazhira’s Ndakaziva haitungamiri (1962; “If I Had
Known”): Kufakunesu is a wicked teacher, but in the end Christianity brings him to a new life. The
loss of traditional values is treated in Kenneth S. Bepswa’s Ndakamuda dakara afa (1960; “I Loved
Her unto Death”), with its emphasis on love and a desire to cultivate Christian ideals of love: Rujeko
and Taremba embody Christian love, but evil in the form of the jealous Shingirai assaults that
relationship. The conflict between Christianity and tradition is also the subject of L. Washington
Chapavadza’s Wechitatu muzvinaguhwa (1963; “Two Is Company, Three Is None”), an attack on
polygamy: Mazarandanda, married to two women, becomes angered as his wives compete with
each other. Giles Kuimba’s Gehena harina moto (1965; “Hell Has No Fire”) depicts a woman who is
wholly evil; the forces of good and evil struggle, revealing inner conflicts in other characters in the
novel. Emmanuel F. Ribeiro’s Muchadura (1967; “You Shall Confess”) is a reassessment of
traditional Shona views of the ancestral spirits.

The major Shona writer of novels during the 20th century was Patrick Chakaipa. His Karikoga
gumiremiseve (1958; “Karikoga and His Ten Arrows”) is a blend of fantasy (it is based on a tale from
the Shona oral tradition) and history, a love story focusing on conflicts between Shona and Ndebele
peoples. Pfumo reropa(1961; “The Spear of Blood”) depicts the dangers of the misuse of power in
traditional times: a chief, Ndyire, manipulates the traditional system to his own selfish advantage.
This novel resembles the Nyanga epic Mwindo: a son of the chief, Tanganeropa, escapes his
father’s murderous wrath to return later and overcome the tyrant. Christianity becomes a theme in
Chakaipa’s third novel, Rudo ibofu (1962; “Love Is Blind”), having to do with the conflict between
tradition and Christianity: Rowesai is beaten by her father when she decides to become a nun. She
is later mauled by a leopard. At a dramatic and climactic movement, she returns home as a nun,
and her father converts to Christianity. Garandichauya (1963; “I Shall Return”) and Dzasukwa
mwana-asina-hembe(1967; “Dzasukwa Beer-for-Sale”) focus on contemporary urban life and
its vicissitudes. In the former, Matamba, a boy from the country, falls into the clutches of a
prostitute, Muchaneta. When he returns to his rural home, having been rendered moneyless by
Muchaneta and blinded by her male friends, he finds his wife awaiting him. In the latter, the
corrosive effects of colonialism on Shona tradition are dramatized.
In Nhoroondo dzokuwanana (1958; “The Way to Get Married”), Paul Chidyausiku attempts to bring
into union traditional Shona beliefs and Christianity: using marriage as the focal point, it describes a
modern African couple, Tadzimirwa and Chiwoniso, moving into their married life within
the context of the two conflicting forces. Chidyausiku’s novel Nyadzi dzinokunda rufu (1962;
“Dishonour Greater than Death”; Eng. trans. Nyadzi dzinokunda rufu) has its hero, Nyika, move
from the traditional world into an urban setting where he is debased and disgraced. Chidyausiku
wrote the first published Shona play, Ndakambokuyambira (1968; “I Warned You”), which also
deals with the contest resulting when perceived notions of traditionalism are placed within an
urban context. His novel Karumekangu (1970), which takes as its setting urban locales
in Zimbabwe and South Africa, is an effort to blend tradition and urbanism.

The first published poetry in Shona was Soko risina musoro (1958; “The Tale Without a Head”; Eng.
trans. Soko risina musoro), by Herbert W. Chitepo, a somewhat allegorical poem about a wandering
African who must make a decision whether to preserve custom or to move in new directions.
Wilson Chivaura wrote poetry as well, some of which was published in Madetembedzo(1969).
Shona poetry also appeared in such journals as Poet, Two Tone, and Chirimo.

Somali

Hikmad Soomaali (“Somali Wisdom”), a collection of traditional stories in the Somali language

recorded by Muuse Xaaji Ismaaciil Galaal, was published in 1956. Shire Jaamac Axmed published
materials from the Somali oral traditionas Gabayo, maahmaah, iyo sheekooyin yaryar (1965;
“Poems, Proverbs, and Short Stories”). He also edited a literary journal, Iftiinka aqoonta (“Light of
Education”), and published two short novels in 1973: Halgankiii nolosha (“Life Struggle”), dealing
with the traditional past in negative terms, and Rooxaan(“The Spirits”). Further stories from the
oral tradition were written down and published in Cabdulqaadir F. Bootaan’s Murti iyo
sheekooyin (1973; “Traditional Wisdom and Stories”) and Muuse Cumar Islaam’s Sheekooyin
Soomaaliyeed (1973; “Somali Stories”).

Poetry is a major form of expression in the Somali oral tradition. Its different types include
the gabay, usually chanted, the jiifto, also chanted and usually moody, the geeraar, short and
dealing with war, the buraambur, composed by women, the heello, or balwo, made up of short
love poems and popular on the radio, and the hees, popular poetry. Maxamed Cabdulle
Xasan (Mohammed Abdullah Hassan) created poetry as a weapon, mainly in the oral tradition.
Farah Nuur, Qamaan Bulhan, and Salaan Arrabey were also well-known poets. Abdillahi Muuse
created didactic poems; Ismaaʿiil Mire and Sheikh Aqib Abdullah Jama composed religious poetry.
Ilmi Bowndheri wrote love poetry.

Drama has also flourished in the Somali language, and here, as in the language’s other written
forms, the oral tradition continues to have a dynamic influence. In 1968 Hassan Shekh Mumin
wrote the play Shabeelnaagood (Leopard Among the Women), which has to do with marriage and
the relations between men and women in contemporary contexts. Verse influenced by Somali oral
tradition plays a major role in this drama. Ali Sugule, another playwright, wrote Kalahaab iyo
kalahaad (1966; “Wide Apart and Flown Asunder”), a play concerning traditional and modern ideas
about marriage and relations between the generations.

A story by Axmed Cartan Xaange “Qawdhan iyo Qoran” published in 1967 in the
journal Horseed examined the situation of women in traditional society. He wrote the first play in
Somali, Samawada (1968), depicting women’s role in the independence struggle after World War
II. Somalia’s daily newspaper serialized stories as well, including works by Axmed Faarax Cali
“Idaajaa” and Yuusuf Axmed “Hero.”
In his novel Aqoondarro waa u nacab jacayl (1974; Ignorance Is the Enemy of Love)—the first novel
published in Somali—Faarax Maxamed Jaamac Cawl criticized the traditional past. He made use of
documentary sources having to do with the struggle against colonialism in the early 20th century,
when forces under the leadership of Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan fought, among others, the British
colonial powers. The two central characters in the novel, Cali Maxamed Xasan and Cawrala Barre,
were based on historical characters. The author also brings the oral poetry tradition into the novel,
its characters speaking in poetic language. The novel launches an assault on ignorance, as the title
suggests, born of, among other things, illiteracy. And it takes a positive view of Somali women.
Customs having to do with marriage play an important role in the novel, especially the subverting
of such customs for one’s own ends. Cawrala and Calimaax meet onboard a ship that has sailed
from Aden, and they fall in love. But Cawrala has been promised by her father to another man.
Because of a rough sea, the ship founders, and Calimaax rescues Cawrala from the water. Cawrala’s
love for Calimaax intensifies, and her relations with her father are therefore strained. She sends a
letter to Calimaax, who, because he cannot read, has Sugulle, his new father-in-law, read it to him,
and this leads to difficulties with his wife’s family. When Cawrala learns of this, she is distressed.
Then she learns that Calimaax died while at war. When Cawrala laments his death, her mother
forces her to leave home. Then, at night, a voice comes to Cawrala, telling her that “a hero does
not die.” And in fact, Calimaax did not die; he was wounded, but he survived. Alone and wounded,
he must fight a leopard, and the words of Cawrala’s letter sustain him. In the meantime, Cawrala is
miserable, and she debates with her parents and members of her community whether she should
marry the man her father has selected for her. She is forced to marry the man, Geelbadane. But
she becomes so ill that he sends her back to her family. Calimaax, learning of this, sends a message
to her family, asking that she be allowed to marry him. Her family agrees, but she dies before the
marriage can take place. Two years after that, still suffering from his wounds and his love for
Cawrala, Calimaax dies. A later novel by Cawl, Garbaduubkii gumeysiga (1978; “The Shackles of
Colonialism”), has to do with contemporary history.

Southern Sotho

The first writer in the Southern Sotho language was Azariele M. Sekese, who gathered Sotho oral
traditions and published them in Mekhoa ea Basotho le maele le litsomo (1893; “Customs and
Stories of the Sotho”). He also wrote a popular animal story, Bukana ea tsomo tsa pitso ea
linonyana, le tseko ea Sefofu le Seritsa (1928; “The Book of Stories of the Meeting of the Birds, and
the Lawsuit between Sefofu and Seritsa”). Historical events, a central focus in much early
Sotho literature, are depicted, for example, in J.J. Machobane’s Mahaheng a matšo (1946; “In the
Dark Caves”) and Senate, shoeshoe ’a Moshoeshoe (1954; “Senate, the Pride of Moshoeshoe”),
both of which treat events during the reign of the Sotho chief Moshoeshoe. M. Damane wrote
the historical novel Moorosi, morena oa Baphuthi (1948; “Moorosi, the King of the Baphuthi”), the
story of Moorosi and his dealings with the British. S.M. Guma wrote historical novels about King
Mohlomi (1960) and Queen Mmanthathisis (1962). The prolific B. Makalo Khaketla published a play
in 1947, Moshoeshoe le baruti (“Moshoeshoe and the Missionaries”), and historical themes can be
found in plays by E.A.S. Lesoro and B. Malefane, both of whom wrote dramas about the Zulu
chief Shaka. Much of Sotho poetry is derived from the oral tradition; Zakea D. Mangoaela’s
collection Lithoko tsa marena a Basotho (1921; Praise of the Sotho Kings) is the most outstanding
example.

The giant figure in Southern Sotho literature is Thomas Mokopu Mofolo. His three novels
were Moeti oa bochabela (1907; The Traveller of the East), Pitseng(1910; “In the Pot”; Eng.
trans. Pitseng), and Chaka (1925; Eng. trans. Chaka: An Historical Romance). The Traveller of the
East is clearly influenced by Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (which had been translated into Southern
Sotho in 1872): it is an allegorical work that views Christianity as light and Africa as
darkness. Pitseng has to do with conflicting views of marriage, Christian and traditional. Chaka is a
novel about Shaka; it is an effective blending of Sotho oral tradition and contemporary historical
reality and, from the point of view of storytelling, a yoking of oral and literary forms. Mofolo
depends on the oral tradition—more specifically, the traditional heroic cycle—for the formal
structure of his work. But, like Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (1958), Chaka uses a stark
element of realism to break with the romanticism and the circular ordering of oral tradition. By
moving the novel’s central character, Chaka, out of the purely oral realm and into a more
psychologically realistic mode, Mofolo is able to present his interpretation of the Zulu chief.
Mofolo’s work is significant not only as a fictionalized historical biography but as a crucial work
positioned confidently on the boundaries of—and revealing the clear connection between—the
oral and the written. Mofolo effectively brings the historical Shaka into the context of a
psychological Shaka, and it is the oral tradition that makes this complex layering process possible.
In Mofolo’s novel the mythic being Isanusi, who serves as both an actor in the narrative and a
commentator on it, enables Mofolo to generate this layering. The importance of Chaka, then, is not
that it is history; it is not. It is a comment on history. Mofolo’s technique is derived from oral
historians in Southern Africa, who interlaced history with commentary. Mofolo’s inclusion of a
character such as Isanusi keeps the novel from becoming overly didactic and also sustains its status
as a work of art.

Sotho tradition is a central concern of B.M. Khaketla in his novel Meokho ea thabo (1951; “Tears of
Joy”). In it a young man, Moeketsi, falls in love, but his beloved’s parents want her to marry
someone else. He meets another young woman, but she is engaged to a man she does not know,
and by now Moeketsi’s parents have chosen a bride for him. It turns out that he is the man
selected for the young woman, and she is the woman selected as his bride. Ramasoabi le
Potso (1937; “Ramasoabi and Potso”), by M.L. Maile, and Sek’hona sa joala (“A Mug of Beer”), by
T.M. Mofokeng—both didactic, moralizing stories—were among the earliest dramatic works in
Southern Sotho.

The conflict between Sotho tradition and the West, including Christianity, can be found in a number
of Sotho works. Everitt Lechesa Segoete wrote the novel Monono ke moholi ke mouoane (1910;
“Riches Are Like Mist and Fog”), which in a heavily moralizing way treats the conflict between
Sotho tradition and the world of the whites: Khitšane falls in with a criminal, Malebaleba, goes to
jail, and then is converted to Christianity by Malebaleba, who has become an evangelist. Albert
Nqheku’s novel Arola naheng ea Maburu (1942; “Arola Among the Boers”) deals with the conflicts
between blacks and whites, between the rural and the urban, and between tradition and
modernism. Playwrights such as Maile and Khaketla wrote of polygamy; others examined marriage
(J.G. Mocoancoeng), love relationships (J.J. Moiloa, J.D. Koote, P.S. Motsieloa, V.G.L. Leutsoa, and
J.S. Monare), and Christianity and tradition (Mofokeng).

Swahili

Swahili literature is usually divided into classical and contemporary periods and genres. There were
early historical works, such as Tarekhe ya Pate (“The Pate Chronicle”); reassembled by the 19th-
century scholar Fumo Omar al-Nabhani, it describes events from the 13th to the 19th century.
Another chronicle, Khabari za Lamu (“The Lamu Chronicle”), takes the 18th and 19th centuries as
its subject. Both religious and secular poetry, showing the influence of Muslim Arabic literature and
of the East African culture from which it arose, was a central vehicle of written literary
expression. Al Inkishafi (The Soul’s Awakening), by Sayyid Abdallah bin Ali bin Nasir, has closer
connections to historical reality, albeit still within an Islamic context. The didactic Utendi wa
Mwana Kupona (1858; “Poem of Mwana Kupona”) was written by the first prominent Swahili
female poet, Mwana Kupona binti Msham. Love poetry, like other poetry, was sung with or without
musical accompaniment. The epic of the legendary figure Fumo Liyongo wa Bauri, who likely lived
during the 12th century, was created by Muhammad Kijumwa (Utenzi wa Fumo Liyongo [1913;
“The Epic of Fumo Liyongo”). Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy wrote much poetry, including works
with nationalistic topics. There were also contemporary epics, including Utenzi wa vita vya
Wadachi kutamalaki mrima, 1307 A.H.(1955; The German Conquest of the Swahili Coast, 1897
A.D.), by Hemedi bin Abdallah bin Said Masudi al-Buhriy, and Utenzi wa vita vya Maji Maji (1933;
“The Epic of the Maji Maji Rebellion”), by Abdul Karim bin Jamaliddini. A novel, Habari za
Wakilindi (“The Story of the Wakilindi Lineage”; Eng. trans. The Kilindi), published in three volumes
between 1895 and 1907 by Abdallah bin Hemedi bin Ali Ajjemy, deals with the Kilindi, the rulers of
the state of Usambara.

It was Shaaban Robert who had the most dynamic and long-lasting effect on contemporary Swahili

literature. He wrote poetry, prose, and proverbs. Almasi za Afrika (1960; “African Diamonds”) is
one of his famous books of poetry. Of his prose, his utopian novel trilogy is among his best-known
works: Kusadikika, nchi iliyo angani (1951; Kusadikika, a Country in the Sky), Adili na nduguze(1952;
“Adili and His Brothers”), and Kufikirika (written in 1946, published posthumously in 1967). Adili
and His Brothers is told largely by means of flashbacks. In Kusadikika a fantasy land is created. This
largely didactic novel is heavy with morals, as suggested by the allegorical names given to the
characters. (In the succeeding works of his trilogy, Robert moves away from the homiletic
somewhat.) By means of flashbacks and images of the future, Kusadikika tells the story of Karama,
which occurs mainly in a courtroom. Like many other African authors of his time, he juxtaposes the
oral and the written in this novel; it is his experimentation with narrative time that is unique.
Robert also wrote essays and Utenzi wa vita vya uhuru, 1939 hata 1945 (1967; “The Epic of the
Freedom War, 1939 to 1945”).

Significant poetry collections include Amri Abedi’s Sheria za kutunga mashairi na diwani ya

Amri (1954; “The Principles of Poetics Together with a Collection of Poems by Amri”). Ahmad Nassir
and Abdilatif Abdalla also wrote poetry. Abdalla’s Sauti ya dhiki (1973; “The Voice of Agony”)
contains poems composed between 1969 and 1972, when he was a political prisoner. Euphrase
Kezilahabiwrote poetry (as in Karibu ndani [1988; “Come In”]) that led the way to the
establishment of free verse in Swahili. Other experimenters with poetry included Mugyabuso M.
Mulokozi and Kulikoyela K. Kahigi, who together published Malenga wa bara (1976). Ebrahim N.
Hussein and Penina Muhando produced innovative dramatic forms through a synthesis of
Western drama and traditional storytelling and verse. A play by Hussein, Kinjeketile (1969; Eng.
trans. Kinjeketile), deals with the Maji Maji uprising, and Muhando wrote such plays as Hatia (1972;
“Guilt”), Tambueni haki zetu (1973; “Reveal Our Rights”), Heshima yangu (1974; “My Honour”),
and Pambo (1975; “Decoration”). The Paukwa Theatre Association of Tanzania produced Ayubu,
published in 1984. Henry Kuria experimented with drama with such plays as Nakupenda, lakini…
(1957; “I Love You, But…”).

Muhammad Saleh Abdulla Farsy wrote the novel Kurwa and Doto: maelezo ya makazi katika kijiji
cha Unguja yaani Zanzibar (1960; “Kurwa and Doto: A Novel Depicting Community Life in a
Zanzibari Village”). Another utopian novel was written by Paul O. Ugula, Ufunguo wenye
hazina (1969; “The Key to the Treasure”). There were also novels about contemporary society,
including Kuishi kwingi ni kuona mengi (1968; “Living Long Is to Experience Much”) and Alipanda
upepo kuvuna tufani (1969; “He Who Sows the Wind Reaps the Storm”), by J.N. Somba. Christianity
is a strong influence in these novels. The Mau Mau uprising is treated in a novel by P.M.
Kareithi, Kaburi bila msalaba(1969; “Grave Without a Cross”). Muhammad Said Abdulla wrote the
first Swahili detective novel, Mzimu wa watu wa kale (1960; “Graveyard of the Ancestors”), and
with the appearance of Faraji Katalambulla’s Simu ya kifo(1965; “Phone Call of Death”),
the genre hit its stride. G.C. Mkangi’s novel Ukiwa (1975; “Loneliness”) and Ndyanao Balisidya’s
novel Shida (1975; “Hardship”) focus on contemporary social conflicts.

Popular newspaper fiction was a major source of literary storytelling during the 20th century. It
appeared in such newspapers as Baraza and Taifa Weekly and included writing by A.T. Banzi
(“Lazima nimwoe nitulize moyo” [1970; “I Have to Marry Her to Calm My Heart”]) and Bob N.
Okoth (“Rashidi akasikia busu kali lamvuta ulimi” [1969; “Rashidi Felt a Wild Kiss Pulling His
Tongue”]). In the 1980s this genre flourished with works by such authors as the prolific Ben R.
Mtobwa and Rashidi Ali Akwilombe.

In addition to pushing the boundaries of verse, Kezilahabi also experimented with the novel
form; Nagona (1990) is an example. He had a major influence on the contemporary novel. In
his Rosa Mistika (1971) the effects of alien cultureson indigenous cultures are measured.
In Kichwamaji (1974; “Waterhead”) he treats the conflict between the generations, and in Dunia
uwanja wa fujo (1975; “The World Is a Field of Chaos”) he emphasizes the effects of foreign
cultures on indigenous cultures. His critical stand on Tanzania’s socialism is reflected in Gamba la
nyoka (1979; “The Snake’s Skin”). In Kwaheri Iselamagazi (1992; “Goodbye, Iselamagazi”), Bernard
Mapalala explores critically the rule of the Nyamwezi warlord Mirambo during the 19th century.
The topic of AIDSemerged in the 1980s in novels such as Kifo cha AIDS (1988; “An AIDS Death”), by
Clemence Merinyo.

Xhosa

The first piece of Xhosa writing was a hymn written in the early 19th century by Ntsikana. The Bible
was translated between the 1820s and 1859. Lovedale Press was established in the 19th century by
the London Missionary Society. In 1837 the Wesleyans published a journal, Umshumayeli
Indaba (“The Preacher’s News”), which ran to 1841. Lovedale, the Scots mission, was the centre of
early Xhosa writing. Ikhwezi was produced during the years 1844 and 1845. The Wesleyan
missionaries started a magazine in 1850, Isitunywa Senyanga (“The Monthly Messenger”); its
publication was interrupted by one of the frontier wars. A monthly in both Xhosa and
English, Indaba (“The News”), edited by William Govan, ran from 1862 until 1865; it was succeeded
by The Kaffir Express in 1876, to be replaced by Isigidimi samaXhosa (“The Xhosa Messenger”), in
Xhosa only. John Tengo Jabavu and William Gqoba were its editors. It ceased publication with
Gqoba’s death in 1888. Imvo Zabantsundu(“Opinions of the Africans”) was a newspaper edited by
Jabavu, who was assisted by John Knox Bokwe. Izwi Labantu (“The Voice of the People”) began
publication in 1897 with Nathaniel Cyril Mhala as its editor; it was financially assisted by Cecil
Rhodes, who had resigned as prime minister of Cape Colony in 1896. Much early Xhosa prose and
poetry appeared in these periodicals.

African protest, which was not allowed in works published by the mission presses, was heard in the
journals. In fact, Imvo Zabantsundu was suppressed by military authorities during the South African
War. Gqoba and William Wawuchope Citashe published politically potent poetry in the
newspapers. Jonas Ntsiko (pseudonym uHadi Waseluhlangeni [“Harp of the Nation”]) in 1877
urged Isigidimi samaXhosa to speak out on political issues. Poets such as Henry Masila Ndawo
and S.E.K. Mqhayi assailed white South Africans for creating an increasingly repressive atmosphere
for blacks. James J.R. Jolobe attempted in his poetry to blend nostalgia for the Xhosa past with an
acceptance of the Christian present. (Indeed, many early writers of prose and verse had Christian
backgrounds that were the result of their having attended missionary schools, and so shared
Jolobe’s thematic concerns.) Mqhayi was called "the father of Xhosa poetry" by the Zulu poet and
novelist Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, but Jolobe was the innovator who experimented aggressively
with form.

Some of the first prose writers, such as Gqoba and W.B. Rubusana, were concerned with putting
into print materials from the Xhosa oral traditions. Tiyo Soga and his son, John Henderson Soga,
translated Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progressinto Xhosa as uHambo lomhambi (1866 and 1926). Henry
Masila Ndawo’s first novel, uHambo lukaGqoboka (1909; “The Journey of a Convert”), was heavily
influenced by the first half of that translation. The Xhosa oral tradition also had an effect on
Ndawo’s work, including the novel uNolishwa (1931), about a woman whose name means
"Misfortune." Brought up in an urban environment, she is the cause of difficulties among her
people and between the races. In uNomathamsanqa noSigebenga (1937; “Nomathamsanqa and
Sigebenga”)—the name Nomathamsanqa meaning "Good Fortune" and the name Sigebenga
meaning "Criminal" or "Ogre"—the son of a traditional chief provides sustenance for his people.
Enoch S. Guma, in his novel uNomalizo; okanye, izinto zalomhlaba
ngamajingiqiwu (1918; Nomalizo; or, The Things of This Life Are Sheer Vanity), wrote a somewhat
allegorical study of two boys, borrowing the structure of the story from the Xhosa oral tradition.

Guybon Sinxo’s novels describe city life in a way similar to those of Alex La Guma, a South African
writer, and those of the Nigerian author Cyprian Ekwensi. In Sinxo’s uNomsa (1922), the main
character, Nomsa, becomes aware of the dangers of urban living, learning "that the very people
who most pride themselves on their civilization" act against those ideals. In the end, Nomsa
marries the village drunk and reforms him; she then returns with him to the country, where she
creates a loving home, albeit a Christian one. In Sinxo’s second novel, Umfundisi
waseMthuqwasi (1927; “The Priest of Mthuqwasi”), Thamsanqa, a businessman, has a dream that
inspires him to become a Christian minister, but in so doing he severs his connections with his
traditional past and soon after dies, exhausted. His brother-in-law, however, combines Christianity
and Xhosa tradition in his life, and he survives. Sinxo’s third novel, published in 1939, was Umzali
wolahleko (“The Prodigal Parent”), the story of a boy, Ndopho, and his brother, Ndimeni. Ndopho is
spoiled; Ndimeni does all the work in the household. Ndimeni’s labours bring him success, while
Ndopho’s self-involvement leads him steadily down. Sinxo moralizes, "No Xhosa will flourish if he
continues to drink!"

The greatest achievement in Xhosa writing, and one of Africa’s finest novels, is Ingqumbo
yeminyanya (1940; The Wrath of the Ancestors), written by A.C. Jordan. In this novel Jordan
explores the central issue that concerned most of the writers who came before him—the
relationship between African tradition and the intrusion of the West into African societies—and in
the process he moves the novel form into greater complexity and nuance. In an unsparingly
realistic way, Zwelinzima, the novel’s central character, is confronted with the demands of
Mpondomise tradition and Western Christianity, of past and present. What dooms Zwelinzima is
that he is unable to bring these warring sides into harmony. Like Okonkwo in Achebe’s Things Fall
Apart and Chaka in Mofolo’s Chaka, Zwelinzima is given the opportunity to assume a heroic role,
but, because of an essential flaw, he is brought down in a starkly realistic manner by an internal
psychological struggle. That struggle is the conflict within his society writ small.

Other novelists after Jordan continued in various ways and with varied degrees of success to deal
with these same issues, including P.M. Lutshete in Unyana wolahleko (1965; “The Prodigal Son”)
and Peter M. Mtuze in uDingezweni(1966). In E.B. Ndovela’s Sikondini (1966), the character
Zwilakhe cuts himself off from Xhosa customs and lives an unhappy life, while Jongikhaya, who has
steadily followed Xhosa customs, is happily married and has become a successful businessman.
Westernized Africans and uncompromising Xhosa traditionalists are at cross-purposes in Z.S.
Qangule’s Izagweba (1972; “Weapons”). In K.S. Bongela’s Alitshoni lingenandaba (1971; “The Sun
Does Not Set Without News”), the reader is led to a revelation of the corruption that results when
traditional ties are broken. Christianity and urban corruption are at the centre of Witness K.
Tamsanqa’s Inzala kaMlungisi (1954; “The Progeny of Mlungisi”). Tradition and modernism are a
theme in D.Z. Dyafta’s Ikamva lethu (1953; “Our Ancestry”) and E.S.M. Dlova’s Umvuzo
wesono (1954; “The Wages of Sin”). Other authors—such as Aaron Mazambana Mmango, Marcus
A.P. Ngani, Bertrand Bomela, Godfrey Mzamane, D.M. Lupuwana, and Minazana Dana—confronted
very similar issues. These writers tried to come to terms with the world that so enthralled 19th-
century Xhosa intellectuals but that lost its appeal as the marginalized role of the African in it
became more and more evident.
Yoruba

In a story from the Yoruba oral tradition, a boy moves farther and farther away from home. With
the assistance of a fantasy character, a fox, the boy is able to meet the challenges set by
ominous oba (kings) in three kingdoms, each a greater distance from the boy’s home. The fox
becomes the storyteller’s means of revealing the developing wisdom of the boy, who steadily loses
his innocence and moves to manhood. This oral tale is the framework for the best-known work in
Yoruba and the most significant contribution of the Yoruba language to fiction: D.O.
Fagunwa’s Ogboju ode ninu igbo irunmale (1938; The Forest of a Thousand Daemons), which
contains fantasy and realistic images along with religious didacticism and Bunyanesque allegory, all
placed within a frame storythat echoes that of The Thousand and One Nights. The novel very
effectively combines the literary and oral forces at work among Yoruba artists of the time. Its
central character is Akara-ogun. He moves into a forest three times, each time confronting fantasy
characters and each time involved in a difficult task. In the end, he and his followers go to a wise
man who reveals to them the accumulated wisdom of their adventures. The work was successful
and was followed by others, all written in a similar way: Igbo olodumare (1949; “The Jungle of the
Almighty”), Ireke-Onibudo  (1949), and Irinkerindo ninu Igbo Elegbeje (1954; “Irinkerindo the Hunter
in the Town of Igbo Elegbeje”; Eng. trans. Expedition to the Mount of Thought), all rich
combinations of Yoruba and Western images and influences. Fagunwa’s final novel, Adiitu
olodumare (1961; “God’s Mystery-Knot”), placed a more contemporary story into the familiar
fantasy framework: so as to help his poverty-stricken parents, the central character, Adiitu,
journeys into a forest, struggles with creatures of the forest, and finds his parents dead when he
returns home. He moves into heaven in a dream, where he encounters his parents. He falls in love
with Iyunade, and they are marooned on an island, where he saves her. When they get to their
home, a friend of Adiitu attempts to destroy the relationship, but in the end they are married.
Realism is faced with fantasy in the structure of the story, in the characters, and in the events. This
combination of a folktale with a realistic frame revealed new possibilities to Yoruba writers.

There are two competing strands in Yoruba literature, one influenced by the rich Yoruba oral
tradition, the other receiving its impetus from the West. The history of Yoruba literature moves
between these forces. The earliest literary works were translations of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,
published as Ilosiwaju ero-mimo in 1866, and of the Bible, published as Bibeli mimo in 1900. There
was an early series of Yoruba school readers, Iwe kika Yoruba (1909–15), containing prose
and poetry. The first written poetry, by such poets as J. Sobowale Sowande and A. Kolawole Ajisafe,
dealt with personal and historical experiences. These poems combined traditional poetic structures
and contemporary events as well as religious influences. At about the same time, Denrele
Adetimkan Obasa published, in 1927, a volume of materials from the Yoruba oral tradition (other
volumes followed in 1934 and 1945).

A realistic treatment of the Yoruba past was attempted by Adekanmi Oyedele, whose novel Aiye
re! (1947; “What People Do!”) deals with traditional Yoruba life. Isaac Oluwole Delano’s Aiye d’aiye
oyinbo (1955; “Changing Times: The White Man Among Us”) is another novel in this realistic vein; it
deals with the coming of the Europeans. His second novel, Lojo ojo un (1963; “In Olden Times”), is
also a historical novel. Joseph Folahan Odunjo also wrote two novels, Omo oku orun (1964; “The
Deceased Woman’s Daughter”) and Kuye (1964), the latter about a Cinderella-type boy who moves
from misery to happiness.

Other works, perhaps influenced by Fagunwa, melded fantasy and realism: Olorun esan (1952;
“God’s Vengeance”), by Gabriel Ibitoye Ojo, and Ogun Kiriji(1961; “The Kiriji War”), by Olaiya
Fagbamigbe, also have oral roots. J. Ogunsina Ogundele wrote novels, including Ibu-Olokun (1956;
“The Deeps of Olokun”) and Ejigbede lona isalu-orun (1956; “Ejigbede Going to Heaven”), that
move characters into realms of fantasy. D.J. Fatanmi wrote K’orimale ninu igbo Adimula (1967;
“Korimale in the Forest of Adimula”), which also shows the influence of Fagunwa. Femi Jeboda
wrote Olowolaiyemo (1964), a realistic novel having to do with life in a Yoruba city. Adebayo
Faleti’s works, such as the short novel Ogun awitele (1965; “A War Foreseen”) and the narrative
poem Eda ko l’aropin (1956; “Don’t Underrate”), display fantasy roots. Faleti also published a
historical novel, Omo olokun-esin (1970; “Son of the Horse’s Master”). Afolabi Olabimtan wrote a
realistic novel, Kekere ekun (1967; “Leopard Boy”), a heavily Christian work. Akinwunmi Isola
wrote O le ku (1974; “Fearful Incidents”), a realistic novel.

Drama was also being developed in the middle of the 20th century. Olanipekun Esan’s plays based
on Greek tragedies were produced in 1965 and 1966. Other significant playwrights include Faleti,
Olabimtan, Hubert Ogunde, and Duro Ladipo.

Zulu

Like most other African literatures, Zulu literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries falls into
two distinct categories, one concerned with traditional (Zulu) life and customs, the other with
Christianity. These two broad areas of early literary activity combined in the 1930s in an
imaginative literature that focused on a conflict that profoundly preoccupied southern African
writers for decades—the conflict between the urban, Christian, Westernized milieu and the
traditional, largely rural African past.

There were early translations of the Christian scriptures in the mid-19th century. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress was also translated and published in two parts (1868 and 1895). Magema kaMagwaza
Fuze’s Abantu abamnyama lapha bavela ngakhona (“Where the Black People Came From”) was
published in 1922. Written works on Zulu customs also appeared, including Petros Lamula’s Isabelo
sikaZulu (1936; “Zulu Heritage”) and T.Z. Masondo’s Amasiko esiZulu(1940; “Zulu Customs”). R.H.
Thembu’s story uMamazane (1947) includes references to Zulu tradition. Cyril Lincoln Sibusiso
Nyembezi and Otty Ezrom Howard Mandlakayise Nxumalo compiled Zulu customs, as did Leonhard
L.J. Mncwango, Moses John Ngcobo, and M.A. Xaba. Violet Dube’s Woza nazo(1935; “Come with
Stories”), Alan Hamilton S. Mbata and Garland Clement S. Mdhladhla’s uChakijana bogcololo
umphephethi wezinduku zabafo (1927; “Chakijana the Clever One, the Medicator of the Men’s
Fighting Sticks”), and F.L.A. Ntuli’s Izinganekwane nezindaba ezindala (1939; “Oral Narratives and
Ancient Traditions”) are compilations of oral stories. Nyembezi gathered and annotated Zulu and
Swati heroic poems in Izibongo zamakhosi (1958; “Heroic Poems of the Chiefs”), and E.I.S.
Mdhladhla’s uMgcogcoma (1947; “Here and There”) contains Zulu narratives.

These early Zulu writers were amassing the raw materials with which the modern Zulu novel would
be built. Christian influence from abroad would combine with the techniques of traditional Zulu
oral traditions to create this new form. There would also be one additional ingredient: the events
that constituted Zulu history. Two outstanding early writers dealt with historical figures and events.
One, John Langalibalele Dube, became the first Zulu to write a novel in his native language
with Insila kaShaka (1933; “Shaka’s Servant”; Eng. trans. Jeqe, the Bodyservant of King Shaka). The
second, R.R.R. Dhlomo, published a popular series of five novels on Zulu
kings: uDingane (1936), uShaka (1937), uMpande (1938), uCetshwayo (1952),
and uDinuzulu (1968). Other historical novels include Lamula’s uZulu kaMalandela (1924). S.B.L.
Mbatha’s Nawe Mbopha kaSithayi (1971; “You Too, Mbopha, Son of Sithayi”) is built on
the drama of Shaka’s assassination, as is Elliot Zondi’s drama Ukufa kukaShaka (1966; “The Death
of Shaka”); and Benedict Wallet Vilakazi’s uDingiswayo kaJobe (1939; “Dingiswayo, Son of Jobe”) is
a study of Shaka’s mentor, the Mtetwa leader Dingiswayo. Among other written works based on
Zulu history are Muntu ’s uSimpofu (1969); L.S. Luthango’s uMohlomi (1938), a biography of
Mohlomi, the adviser of the Sotho chief Moshoeshoe; and Imithi ephundliwe (1968; “Barked
Trees”), an imaginative work by Moses Hlela and Christopher Nkosi based on the Zulu War. The
historical trickster Chakijana, who became famous during the Bambatha Rebellion, is depicted in
A.Z. Zungu’s uSukabekhuluma (1933), and Bethuel Blose Ndelu composed a drama, Mageba
lazihlonza (1962; “I Swear by Mageba, the Dream Has Materialized”), set during the reign of the
Zulu king Cetshwayo.

At the heart of Zulu literature of the 20th century is oral tradition. The magical aura of the oral is
present but disguised in the written tradition of the Zulu people. The movement from the oral to
the written was achieved without difficulty: in the beginning, some Zulu authors utilized written
forms as venuesfor sermonizing; others simply reproduced the oral in writing. But more
adventurous and creative writers quickly saw the connections between the two and fashioned
written works using the looms of the oral. Zulu literature owes something to influences from the
West, but the indigenous oral tradition is dominant. Stories of the contemporary world are
constructed over the old oral stories; the space of the eternal, an aspect of the ancient tradition,
gives way to the space of the immediate, and the values expressed in the oral stories continue to
influence the written ones.

In a number of novels, Zulu writers contend with the conflict between tradition and Christianity. In
James N. Gumbi’s Baba ngixolele (1966; “Father, Forgive Me”), a girl, Fikile, struggles with what she
perceives as a gap between those two worlds. S.V.H. Mdluli explores the same theme in uBhekizwe
namadodana akhe (1966; “Bhekizwe and His Young Sons”): a good son retains his ties with his
parents (i.e., tradition) and becomes a successful teacher. A bad son goes wrong and is on the edge
of destruction until he recovers his roots. J.M. Zama’s novel Nigabe ngani? (1948; “On What Do
You Pride Yourself?”) is similarly constructed around positive and negative characters. A
stepmother, Mamathunjwa, spoils her own children, Simangaliso and Nomacala, but despises her
two stepchildren, Msweli and Hluphekile. Christianity is not the villain; instead it is the relaxation of
Zulu values that is the problem. Msweli and Hluphekile succeed, while the pampered children die in
shame. This insistence on retaining a connection with the African past produced a literature
interwoven with Negritude, or black consciousness, a theme that would become a dominant one in
South African politics in the 1960s and ’70s.

Dhlomo’s novel Indlela yababi (1946; “The Bad Path”) investigates the polarity between urbanized
life and traditional practices and concludes that the former is unstable. A similar theme is
developed in a novel by Jordan Kush Ngubane, Uvalo lwezinhlonzi (1956; “Fear of Authority”).
Gumbi’s novel Wayesezofika ekhaya (1966; “He Was About to Go Home”) shows a country boy
turning to crime as a result of urbanization. There is much of the Zulu oral tradition and of Pilgrim’s
Progress in such novels, both in content and in form. The influence of Jordan’s The Wrath of the
Ancestors can be seen in Kenneth Bhengu’s Umbuso weZembe nenkinga kaBhekifa (1959; “The
Government of Zembe and Bhekifa’s Problem”): a chief and his wife, both educated in schools
influenced by the West, come into conflict with Zulu tradition. A city trickster cons country people
out of their savings in Nyembezi’s Inkinsela yaseMgungundlovu (1961; “The Man from
Mgungundlovu”). That theme persists in Nyembezi’s most successful novel, Mntanami!
Mntanami! (1950; “My Child! My Child!”; Eng. trans. Mntanami! Mntanami!): the character
Jabulani loves the city, but, unprepared to deal with it, he becomes a criminal. In
Nxumalo’s Ngisinga empumalanga(1969; “I Look to the East”), a man loses his children when Zulu
tradition is compromised. In Ikusasa alaziwa (1961; “Tomorrow Is Not Known”), Nxumalo shows
that the urban environment need not be fatal and that Christianity and Zulu values can together act
as guides.

Zulu poetry varies widely, from imitating ancient Zulu poetic forms to analyzing the system
of apartheid that dominated life in South Africa during the 20th century. Some of the finest Zulu
poetry can be found in two collections by Nxumalo, Ikhwezi (1965; “The Morning Star”)
and Umzwangedwa (1968; Self-Consciousness). In Hayani maZulu (1969; “Sing, Zulu People”), P.
Myeni sought to adapt ancient forms to modern literary Zulu. Other Zulu poets who wrote during
the second half of the 20th century include Deuteronomy Bhekinkosi Z. Ntuli (Amangwevu [1969;
“Uppercuts”]), J.C. Dlamini (Inzululwane [1957; “Giddiness”; Eng. trans. Inzululwane]), N.J. Makhaye
(Isoka lakwaZulu [1972; “The Young Man of kwaZulu”]), M.T. Mazibuko (Ithongwane [1969;
“Snuffbox”]), and Elliot Alphas Nsizwane kaTimothy Mkize (Kuyokoma Amathe [1970; “Until the
Mouth Dries Up”]).

Literatures In European And European-Derived Languages

Afrikaans

Afrikaans literature in South Africa can be viewed in the context of Dutch literary tradition or South

African literary tradition. Within an African context, Afrikaans literature will be forever on the
outside. As is the case with the language, it is caught in an identity crisis that was created
irrevocably by the fiercely defended political and cultural identity of the Dutch settlers who arrived
in South Africa in 1652 and whose descendants, together with English-speaking whites, took over
the government in 1948, after which the notorious system of apartheid was enshrined in laws that
would be demolished only in the early 1990s. The conservative branch of the Afrikaner people,
always the most numerous and the most powerful, was in conflict throughout the 20th century
with a talented and growing group of young poets and novelists, such as C. Louis
Leipoldt and Breyten Breytenbach, who sought to broaden the confines of an increasingly limited
people and literature. The history of Afrikaans literature is the history of the Afrikaners, an alien
people whose literature is a testimony to that state of alienation.

Afrikaans, with its roots in Dutch, has been spoken in South Africa mainly by whites since the 18th
century. The First Afrikaans Language Movement began in 1875, led by Stephanus Jacobus du
Toit and others; it represented an effort to make Afrikaans a language separate from Dutch. The
first newspaper in Afrikaans, Die Patriot (“The Patriot”), began publication in 1876. The linguistic
shift from Dutch to Afrikaans did not occur without considerable dispute among the whites of
Dutch descent. It was after the South African War (1899–1902)—which became a prominent
subject of early Afrikaans literature—that Afrikaans became a significant written language.
“Winternag” (1905; “Winter’s Night”), a poem by Eugène Marais, and “Die vlakte” (1906; “The
Plain”), a poem by Jan Celliers, dramatically ushered in this new literary language, along with
language organizations such as the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie (founded 1909). Die brandwag (“The
Outpost”), a magazine, had a literary section from 1910. The Hertzog Prize for poetry, prose,
and drama in Afrikaans was established in 1914. Publishing houses specializing in Afrikaans
publications began in 1914 and 1915. In 1914 Cornelius Jakob Langenhoven fostered Afrikaans in
schools, and the language was soon after studied at universities and used as a medium of
instruction. Parliament recognized Afrikaans as an official language in 1925, six years after it was
named the language of the Dutch Reformed Church. Earlier 19th-century writing had been heavily
didactic; by the 1920s this had begun to change.

Poets became the most potent harbingers of the new language as the Second Afrikaans Language
Movement began; they included Leipoldt, Marais, Celliers, Jakob Daniel du Toit (Totius), Daniel
François Malherbe, and Toon van den Heever. Leipoldt, who would one day be condemned as a
traitor to Afrikaners, was probably one of the greatest and most original poets of the early 20th
century, while Marais in his poetry linked European tradition to the realities of life in South Africa.
Prose also appeared during this period, moving away from such melodramatic works as Johannes
van Wyk (1906), a novel by J.H.H. de Waal, to more rigorously realistic historical works, such as
those by Gustav Preller. Realism began to dominate Afrikaans prose, especially in the work
of Jochem van Bruggen, who wrote a trilogy, the first part of which was Ampie, die
natuurkind (1931; “Ampie, the Child of Nature”), a study of a poor white in South Africa. A.A.
Pienaar (pseudonym Sangiro) wrote popular books about animals. Drama also began to flourish
through the writings of Leipoldt, Langenhoven, and H.A. Fagan. Langenhoven was also a popular
poet, as was A.G. Visser.

Dramatic events in the 1930s—including a drought that caused many farmers to move to the cities,
significant political changes, a sharpening of racial conflict, and the deepening of the Afrikaans-
English conflict—isolated Afrikaners more dramatically in South Africa, and fiercely partisan
organizations such as the Afrikaner-Broederbond and Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge
gained new adherents. The Afrikaner poets known as the Dertigers (“Thirtyers,” or writers of the
1930s) infuriated conservative Afrikaners with a new type of poetry. The poetry of W.E.G. Louw,
N.P. van Wyk Louw, and Elisabeth Eyberswas at the heart of this fertile activity, which centred on
experimentation with form. Van Wyk Louw’s Raka (1941) is a rhymed study of evil, with Raka as the
incarnation of this evil taking over a community. Uys Krige wrote romanticpoetry but is known for
his war poetry and as a dramatist. There was prose written during this period by Abraham H.
Jonker, C.M. van den Heever, and Johannes van Melle, whose Bart Nel (1936), dealing with the
Afrikaner rebellion of 1914–15, is considered by some to be the finest novel in Afrikaans.

After World War II, literary magazines carried Afrikaans works. D.J. Opperman continued the
experimentation with the Afrikaans language in his poetry, and he introduced decisively South
African racial themes into his work. In 1954 Arthur Fula became one of the first black Africans to
write a novel in Afrikaans. Audrey Blignault and Elise Muller wrote short stories and essays. Anna
M. Louw wrote novels.

The Sestigers (“Sixtyers,” or writers of the 1960s) attempted to do for prose what the Dertigers had
done for poetry. Jan Rabie, Etienne Leroux, Dolf van Niekerk, André P. Brink, Abraham de Vries, and
Chris Barnard experimented with the novel and moved into areas largely forbidden until that time,
such as sex and atheism. Brink’s Lobola vir die lewe (1962; “Pledge for Life”) and Orgie (1965;
“Orgy”) caused sensations. Bartho Smit wrote Moeder Hanna (1959; “Mother Hanna”), an
acclaimed drama about the South African War. He also wrote Putsonderwater (1962; “Well-
Without-Water”), considered among the finest plays produced in Afrikaans; it could not be
performed because of its political message. Elsa Joubert wrote a novel about a black woman, Die
swerfjare van Poppie Nongena (1978; The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena, or Poppie). Karel
Schoeman’s ’n Ander land (1984; “Another Country”) moved into the sensitive political and social
realities of South Africa. Adam Small wrote works, such as Kanna hy kô hystoe (1965; Kanna—He Is
Coming Home), that revealed the realities of the lives of nonwhites in South Africa. Ingrid Jonker
wrote intensely personal poetry. Breytenbach wrote surreal poetry, his work revealing his struggle
with the Afrikaners’ political situation in South Africa. His Katastrofes (1964; Catastrophes) is a
series of sketches that take racism, death, and madness as their subjects.

These themes persisted through the end of the 20th century. Riana Scheepers, in Die ding in die
vuur (1990; “The Thing in the Fire”), a collection of short stories, blended Zulu oral tradition with
the world of apartheid. Marlene van Niekerk wrote Triomf (1994; “Triumph”; Eng. trans. Triomf), a
novel based on Sophiatown, a black settlement near Johannesburg that was replaced by the South
African government in the 1950s and ’60s by a white working-class suburb dubbed Triomf. In Lettie
Viljoen’s Klaaglied vir Koos (1984; “Lament for Koos”), a husband leaves his family to join the fight
against apartheid. In his novels Toorberg (1986; Ancestral Voices) and Kikoejoe (1996; Kikuyu),
Etienne van Heerden dealt with 20th-century South African history. (See also treatment of
literature in Afrikaans in South African literature.)

English
Early works in English in western Africa include a Liberian novel, Love in Ebony: A West African
Romance, published in 1932 by Charles Cooper (pseudonym Varfelli Karlee), as well as such works
of Ghanaian pulp literatureas J. Benibengor Blay’s Emelia’s Promise and Fulfilment (1944). R.E.
Obeng, a Ghanaian, wrote Eighteenpence (1941), an early work on the conflict between African and
European cultures. Other early popular writers in Ghana include Asare Konadu, Efua Sutherland,
and Kwesi Brew. The Nigerian Amos Tutuolawrote The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-
Wine Tapster in the Deads’ Town (1952), its construction revealing a clear linkage between the oral
and literary traditions. In it the hero moves to Deads’ Town to bring his tapster back to the land of
the living; the elixir that the hero brings back from the land of the dead, however, is an egg that is
death-dealing as surely as it is life-giving. Tutuola is faithful to oral tradition, but he places the
traditional journeying tale into a very contemporary framework.

Nigeria has been a font of creative writing in English, from the works of Chinua Achebe to those
of Ben Okri. Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, is known for
his drama, poetry, and prose. His The Interpreters (1965) weaves stories from the contemporary
world to the mythic and historical past, manipulating time so that in the end the very structure of
the story is a comment on the lives of the several protagonists. Soyinka was a contributor to and
coeditor of the influential journal Black Orpheus, founded in 1957 and containing the early works of
poets such as Christopher Okigbo of Nigeria, Dennis Brutus and Alex La Guma of South Africa,
and Tchicaya U Tam’si of Congo (Brazzaville). Another literary journal, The Horn, launched in 1958
by John Pepper Clark, provided additional opportunities for writers to have their works
published. Transition, a literary journal begun in Uganda in 1960 by Rajat Neogi, was also a valuable
outlet for many African writers.

Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) is perhaps the best-known African novel of the 20th century. Its
main character is Okonkwo, whose tragic and fatal flaw, his overweening ambition, wounds him.
His frenzied desire to be anything but what his father was causes him to develop a warped view of
his society, so that in the end that view becomes (thanks to seven humiliating years in exile) reality
to him. When he returns, he cannot accept seeing his people in the throes of adapting to the
intruding whites, and things fall apart for him: it is not the society he envisioned, and he takes his
life. Things Fall Apart is a precolonial novel that ends with the coming of colonialism, which triggers
Okonkwo’s demise. Okonkwo is in any case doomed because of his skewed vision. Flora
Nwapa wrote the novel Efuru (1966), the story of a talented, brilliant, and beautiful woman who,
living in a small community, is confined by tradition. A woman’s fundamental role, childbearing, is
prescribed for her, and if she does not fulfill that role she suffers the negative criticism of members
of her society. Borrowing a technique from the oral tradition, Nwapa injects the dimension of
fantasy through the character of the goddess Uhamiri, who is a mythic counterpart to the real-life
Efuru. In The Slave Girl (1977) the novelist Buchi Emecheta tells the story of Ojebeta, who, as she
journeys from childhood to adulthood, moves not to freedom and independence but from one
form of slavery to another. Okri blends fantasy and reality in his novel The Famished Road (1991;
part of a trilogy that also includes Songs of Enchantment [1993] and Infinite Riches [1998]). In the
novel, which addresses the reality of postcolonial Nigeria, Okri uses myth, the Yoruba abiku (“spirit
child”), and other fantasy images to shift between preindependence and postindependence
settings. The spiritual and real worlds are linked in the novel, the one a dimension of the other, in a
narrative mode that African storytellers have been using for centuries.

In other parts of western Africa, Lenrie Peters of The Gambia and Syl Cheyney-Coker of Sierra
Leone were among the most important 20th-century writers. The novelist Ebou Dibba and the poet
Tijan M. Sallah were also from The Gambia. Cameroonian authors writing in English during the
second half of the 20th century include Ba’bila Mutia, John S. Dinga, and Jedida Asheri. Writers in
Ghana during the same period include Amma Darko, B. Kojo Laing, Kofi Awoonor, and Ayi Kwei
Armah. In Fragments (1970) Armah tells of a youth, Baako, who returns from the United States to
his Ghanaian family and is torn between the new demands of his home and the consequent
subversion of a traditional past represented by the mythic Naana, his blind grandmother, who
establishes a context for the tragic story Baako is experiencing.

The dominant writer to emerge from East Africa is the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o. In A Grain of
Wheat (1967) he tells the story of Mugo, alone and alienated, farming after having played a role in
the Mau Mau rebellion; though he has considered himself the Moses of his people, he has a
terrible secret. As Mugo’s story unfolds, the novelist works into his narrative other stories,
including those of Gikonyo, Mumbi, and Karanja, each of whom has an unsavoury past as well.
Ngugi constructs the story around the proverb “Kikulacho ki nguoni mwako” (“That which bites you
is in your own clothing”). Later in his career Ngugi, who spent many years in exile from Kenya,
engaged many writers in a debate as to whether African writers should compose their works in
European or African languages.

Other East African novelists include Okello Oculi, Grace Ogot, Peter K. Palangyo, and W.E. Mkufya.
In Timothy Wangusa’s novel Upon This Mountain(1989), the character Mwambu climbs a mountain
and comes of age. In two novels from Uganda a boy moves to manhood: Abyssinian
Chronicles (2000), by Moses Isegawa, and The Season of Thomas Tebo (1986), by John Nagenda, the
latter an allegorical novel in which a boy’s loss of innocence is tied to politics in that country. One of
Africa’s greatest novelists is the Somali writer Nuruddin Farah, who wrote a trilogy composed of
the novels Maps (1986), Gifts (1992), and Secrets (1998). Maps is the story of a youth, Askar,
growing up in a Somaliadivided by Ethiopia. With the mythic Misra, who becomes his surrogate
mother, and by means of a geographical movement that occurs within a rich mixture of politics and
sex, the boy seeks his identity, a quest that becomes linked to the identity of the land across which
he moves.

From Malawi came such writers as Jack Mapanje, whose collection of poemsSkipping Without

Ropes (1998) reflects on his four years as a political prisoner, and David Rubadiri. Other writers
from Southern Africa include Fwanyanga M. Mulikita and Dominic Mulaisho from Zambia and
Berhane Mariam Sahle Sellassie, Daniachew Worku, and Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin from
Ethiopia. Solomon M. Mutswairo, Dambudzo Marechera, Shimmer Chinodya, Chenjerai Hove,
Yvonne Vera, Alexander Kanengoni, J. Nozipo Maraire, and Batisai Parwada are
among Zimbabwe’s writers in English. Tsitsi Dangarembga wrote Nervous Conditions (1988), a story
of two Shona girls, Tambudzai and Nyasha, both attempting to find their place in contemporary
Zimbabwe. Nyasha has been abroad and wonders about the effect that Westernization has had on
her and her family, while Tambudzai is longing to break out of her traditional world. Looming in the
background are mythic figures, including Lucia, Tambudzai’s aunt.

Doris Lessing is a British writer who spent her early years in what is today Zimbabwe. Her novel The
Grass Is Singing (1950) centres on Dick Turner and Mary Turner, a white couple attempting to
become a part of the rural African landscape. Lessing depicts a stereotyped African character,
Moses, a black servant, whose name gives him historical and religious resonance. He becomes
dominant over the European Mary, manipulating her fears and love of him until in the end he
destroys her. Lessing finds mythic fantasy dimensions in the Europeans, much as Mustafa Sa’eed
does in the women of England in al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ’s novel Season of Migration to the North (1966).

There is much writing in English by expatriates that is rooted in South Africa, from the poetry
of Thomas Pringle to E.A. Kendall’s The English Boy at the Cape (1835), the novels of H. Rider
Haggard and John Buchan, and Turning Wheels (1937), by Stuart Cloete. Olive Schreiner was the
first major South African-born writer. Her novel The Story of an African Farm (1883) continues to
have an international resonance. Pauline Smith wrote powerful short stories; her novel The
Beadle (1926) deals largely with the experiences of Afrikaners in the Eastern Cape region. Sarah
Gertrude Millin had an international audience with such works as God’s Stepchildren (1924). The
short-lived literary review Voorslag (“Whiplash”), begun in 1926, published for wider audiences
work by such poets as Roy Campbell, William Plomer, and Laurens van der Post.
A common subject in the works of the many South African authors writing in English during the
20th century is the racial segregation, codified as apartheidin 1948, that dominated the country
until the early 1990s. In two early novels, Mine Boy (1946), by Peter Abrahams, and Cry, the
Beloved Country (1948), by Alan Paton, black Africans go to Johannesburg and experience the
terror of apartheid. In To Every Birth Its Blood (1981), Mongane Wally Serote tells the stories of Tsi
Molope and Oupa Molope. Tsi looks to his past and wonders, “Where does a river begin to take its
journey to the sea?” The world in which Oupa—the son of Mary, Tsi’s sister—lives postdates the
Soweto uprising of 1976, a time when resistance to apartheid took hold of a new generation and
South Africa witnessed attacks and bombings. Because of their experiences with the police, the
Molope family becomes more politicized. Serote wants the reader to see the human side of his
characters—their vulnerabilities, their uncertainties—while he also wants to demonstrate that it is
not an easy matter to make the revolutionary leap. A Ride on the Whirlwind (1981), by Sydney
Sipho Sepamla, which is set in Soweto, exposes the fearful effects of apartheid.

The playwright Athol Fugard in 1982 produced his play “Master Harold”…and the Boys, the story of
a white boy, Hally, in a restaurant in which two black African men, Willie Malopo and Sam Semela,
are waiters. It is a story of a boy’s coming of age within the realities of the racist system of South
Africa. As the story develops, Hally transfers his fear, love, and hate of his father to Sam, and in the
end he treats Sam as he cannot treat his father. The result is to open anew the wounds
of apartheid. The novel July’s People (1981), by Nadine Gordimer, who received the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1991, takes place in an imagined postindependence South Africa. The story deals with
the Smales, a white couple, and their relationship with July, their black servant. By means of
flashbacks the Smales reconstruct their past, the world of a Johannesburg suburb during the
apartheid period. There is a war, and Maureen Smale and Bamford Smale escape from their
suburban home and go north, where these erstwhile liberals come to July’s rural home and learn,
by their interactions with July and his family and friends, that they cannot move past their former
relationship with their servant and cannot see him from any perspective but that of liberal, self-
confident white overlords. That hopelessly compromised position is the impasse that Gordimer
investigates in this novel. D.M. Zwelonke is the pseudonymous author of Robben Island (1973), a
novel dealing with the political prison maintained by the South African government off the shores
of Cape Town from the mid-1960s. It is the story of Bekimpi, an African political leader jailed
at Robben Island, and it relates his dreams and fantasies, his despair and anger, and his torture and
death.
Athol Fugard with John Kani and Winston NtshonaAthol Fugard (centre) with actors John Kani
(left) and Winston Ntshona, 1973.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

J.M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003, wrote Life and Times of Michael
K (1983), a story with a blurred hero and an indistinct historical and geographical background. It
describes a war that could be any war, a country that could be any country, a bureaucracy that
could be any bureaucracy. Through it all, Michael K—a frail, nondescript, mute man of 30, born
with a cleft lip—survives, not betraying his past, for he has no past, tied as he is to the
unbroken continuity of history. So does Coetzee link apartheid to the ages. The novel becomes, in
the end, an affirmation of humanity; the Earth is destroyed, a man is incarcerated, but he will
return, crawling out of the dust of ruin, re-creating the Earth, making it grow and fructify.

Maru (1971), a novel by Bessie Head, tells a story about the liberation of the San people from
ethnic and racial oppression and about the liberation of the Tswana people of Dilepe from
their prejudices and hatreds. It is a story of a flawed world and the attempts of two mythic people,
Maru and Margaret Cadmore, to restore it to its former perfection. It is also a love story—
Margaret, the loathed Masarwa, opens the hearts of Moleka and Dikeledi—as well as a political
story—Margaret animates Maru’s political vision with love and art. In the end, Maru is a realistic
story with a mythic overlay in which oral and literary traditions are brought together.

French
In the work of the earliest African writers in French can be found the themes that run through
this literature to the present day. These themes have to do with African tradition, with French
colonialism and the displacement of Africans both physically and spiritually from their native
tradition, with attempts to blend the French and the African traditions, and with postindependence
efforts to piece the shards of African tradition and the French colonial experience into a new
reality.

In his novel Les Trois volontés de Malic (1920; “The Three Wishes of Malic”), the Senegalese
writer Ahmadou Mapaté Diagne anticipates such later writers as Sheikh Hamidou Kane, also
of Senegal. In Diagne’s novel, Malic, a Wolof boy, is embroiled in a struggle between Muslim
tradition and the influence of the West. He goes to a French-run school to study; then, instead of
going to Qurʾānic school as his parents wish, he becomes a blacksmith. Other early African works in
French frequently deal with the tensions between country and city, between African and
French culture, and between traditional religious practices and Islam. The novel Force-bonté (1926;
“Much Good Will”), by Bakary Diallo of Senegal, deals with a youth caught in a conflict between his
Muslim background and Western values and culture. The Beninese writer Paul Hazoumé
wrote Doguicimi (1938; Eng. trans. Doguicimi), a historical novel depicting the time of the reign of
the king Gezo in the ancient kingdom of Dahomey. Some writers focused solely on African
tradition, with its positive and negative qualities; these writers include Félix Couchoro, whose
novel L’Esclave (1929; “The Slave”) examines slavery in traditional Dahomey. The Senegalese
writer Ousmane Socéwrote Karim (1935), a novel that depicts a young Wolof caught between
traditional and Western values. He leaves the countryside for the Senegalese cities of Saint-Louis
and Dakar but loses everything when he falls prey to the cities’ wiles; he returns, in the end, to
traditional ways of living. The novel depicts the new society that was being born in early 20th-
century Africa. Mirages de Paris (1937; “Mirages of Paris”) has to do with a Senegalese student in
Paris who falls in love with a Frenchwoman. Abdoulaye Sadji of Senegal wrote Maïmouna (1958;
Eng. trans. Maïmouna), about an African girl who leaves home and goes to Dakar, where she is
seduced. She returns to her home and bears a child who dies; she becomes ill but then recovers
her traditional roots.

Women’s place in Cameroonian society is the subject of Joseph Owono’s Tante Bella (1959; “Aunt
Bella”), the first novel to be published in Cameroon. Paul Lomami-Tshibamba of Congo (Brazzaville)
wrote Ngando le crocodile (1948; “Ngando the Crocodile”; Eng. trans. Ngando), a story rooted in
African tradition. Faralako: roman d’un petit village africaine (1958; “Faralako: Novel of a Little
African Village”), by Emile Cissé, is an early Guinean novel that examines African tradition and
Western technology. Jean Malonga, born in Congo (Brazzaville), wrote Coeur d’Aryenne (1954;
“Heart of Aryenne”), an anticolonial novel. Traditional African society is the primary concern of the
novels Le Fils du fétiche (1955; “The Son of Charm”), by David Ananou of Togo, and Crépuscule des
temps anciens (1962; “Twilight of the Ancient Days”), by Nazi Boni of Upper Volta (later Burkina
Faso).

In Madagascar the journal La Revue de Madagascar (founded in 1933) encouraged writing by

Malagasy writers and included the poetry of Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo, whose La Coupe de
cendres (1924; “Cutting the Ashes”) and Sylves(1927; “Forests”) were collections of poetry that
sought to blend French and Malagasy cultural traditions and that shared many of the themes later
taken up by the Negritude movement. Other early poets writing in French in Madagascar include
Elie-Charles Abraham, E. Randriamarozaka, and Paul Razafimahazo. Édouard Bezoro produced one
of the first Malagasy novels: La Soeur inconnue(1932; “The Unknown Sister”), a historical novel
about the conflict between the French and the Merina (Hova) state in Madagascar at the turn of
the 20th century. Michel-Francis Robinary founded the newspaper L’Éclair de l’Emyrneand wrote
poetry collected in Les Fleurs défuntes (1927; “Dead Flowers”).

After World War I, many of the Africans who had served in the French army remained in France,
bringing pressure on the country to end colonialism and political assimilation. They met with blacks
from the United States, and the result was a new concern with and pride in African cultural
identity. This acknowledgement of blackness—of black roots, black history, and black civilizations—
became part of the struggle against colonialism and evolved, under the tutelage of Léopold
Senghor of Senegal, Aimé Césaire of Martinique, and Léon-Gontran Damas of French Guiana, into
the movement that became known as Negritude. Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays
natal (1939; Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, or Return to My Native Land) and
Senghor’s Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (1948;
“Anthology of the New Black and Malagasy Poetry of the French Language”) are among the
important works of this movement, as is Senghor’s own poetry, including Chants d’ombre (1945;
“Songs of the Shade”) and Éthiopiques (1956). The struggle had earlier been waged in such short-
lived journals as Légitime défense (1932; “Legitimate Defense”) and L’Étudiant noir(1935; “The
Black Student”). In 1947 the journal Présence africaine (“African Presence”) was inaugurated; it
would play a significant role in the encouragement and development of Francophone writing.

Birago Diop of Senegal wrote poetry (e.g., Leurres et lueurs [1960; “Lures and Gleams”]), some of
which emphasizes its connections with the ancestral African past. In Madagascar Jacques
Rabemananjara wrote verse, collected in such volumes as Sur les marches du soir (1942; “On the
Edges of the Evening”), and plays, including Les Dieux malgaches (1947; “The Malagasy Gods”), that
were part of the Negritude movement. Bernard Binlin Dadié of Côte d’Ivoire wrote the
autobiographical Climbié (1956; Eng. trans. Climbié), a novel dealing with traditional African society
and the modern world, as well as drama and lyrical poetry. Fily Dabo Sissoko of Mali emphasized
African tradition in such works as Harmakhis: poèmes du terroir africain (1955; “Harmakhis: Poems
of the African Land”) and Poèmes de l’Afrique noire (1963; “Poems from Black Africa”). Lamine
Diakhaté of Senegal wrote Negritude poetry, as did the Senegalese Lamine Niang
in Négristique (1968). David Diop of Senegal was a poet of protest in his Coups de
pilon (1956; Hammer Blows). The Congolese poet Antoine-Roger Bolamba wrote Esanzo: Chants
pour mon pays (1955; Esanzo: Songs for My Country), a collection of Negritude poetry.

In Côte d’Ivoire Anoma Kanie wrote love poetry (Les Eaux du Comoë [1951; “The Waters of the
Comoë”]), as did Maurice Kone (La Guirlande des verbes[1961; “A Garden of Words”]). From Benin
came such poets as Richard G. Dogbeh-David and Paulin Joachim. In Cameroon, Elolongué Epanya
Yondo wrote Kamerun! Kamerun! (1960; “Cameroon! Cameroon!”), François Sengat-Kuo
wrote Collier de cauris (1970; “Necklace of Cowry Shells”), and Jean-Paul Nyunaï wrote La Nuit de
ma vie (1961; “The Darkness of My Life”). In Guinea prominent poets of the 20th century include
Keita Fodeba, Mamadou Traoré (Ray Autra), and Condetto Nenekhaly-Camara. Other poets of the
period include William J.F. Syad of Somalia and Toussaint Viderot Mensah of Togo. The novelist and
poet Pierre Bamboté is among the Central African Republic’smost important writers of the 20th
century. The Congolese writer Tchicaya U Tam’si published poetry dealing with colonialism
(e.g., Epitomé [1962; “Epitome”] and Le Ventre [1964; “The Belly”]).

Sidiki Dembele of Mali wrote a novel, Les Inutiles (1960; “The Useless Ones”), urging
African intellectuals to return to their traditional homes. Denis Oussou-Essui of Côte d’Ivoire
published a novel in 1965 that also dealt with the strains between African tradition and urban life.
Guinean Camara Laye wrote an autobiographical novel, L’Enfant noir (1953; The African Child). His
most important publication was the novel Le Regard du roi (1954; The Radiance of the King), the
story of Clarence, a white man, who, as he moves deeper and deeper into an African forest, is
progressively shorn of his Western ways and pride. At his nadir, he begins anew, when, naked and
alone, he embraces an ambiguous African king. Mongo Beti (a pseudonym of Alexandre Biyidi-
Awala) of Cameroon wrote Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (1956; The Poor Christ of Bomba), a story
that deals with the complex relationship between Christianity and colonialism in Africa. His Mission
terminée (1957; “The Finished Mission”; Eng. trans. Mission to Kala) treats the uneasy fit of
traditional Africa and Western colonialism, and Le Roi miraculé (1958; Eng. trans. King Lazarus)
depicts a generational struggle within the context of a quixotic view of African tradition. Another
novelist from Cameroon, Benjamin Matip, wrote Afrique, nous t’ignorons (1956; “Africa, We Don’t
Pay Attention to You”), which shows young people caught between the white man’s world and the
traditional African world. Ferdinand Léopold Oyono, also a Cameroonian novelist, wrote Une Vie de
boy (1956; “A Life of a Boy”; Eng. trans. Houseboy), the story of a boy, Toundi, who leaves his rural
home and goes to the town of Dangan, where he becomes the servant for a French commandant
and his wife. Toundi undergoes a type of puberty rite of passage as his experiences among the
whites slowly reveal to him the masks that cover their religion, their justice system, and their family
ideals. Oyono also wrote Le Vieux nègre et la médaille (1956; The Old Man and the Medal)
and Chemin d’Europe (1960; The Road to Europe). The novels of Francis Bebey—Le Fils d’Agatha
Moudio (1967; Agatha Moudio’s Son), La Poupée ashanti (1973; The Ashanti Doll), and Le Roi Albert
d’Effidi(1976; King Albert)—show the influence of African oral tradition in their style and themes. In
the earliest of those novels, a man falls in love, but his society clings to a tradition that will not
allow him to marry the woman of his choice.

Ousmane Sembène was a major film director and a significant novelist. Les Bouts de bois de
Dieu (1960; God’s Bits of Wood), his greatest novel, describes the last gasp of colonialism through
the story of a railroad strike. In it Bakayoko is the spokesman for a future that will combine African
humanism and European technology. The characters Fa Keïta, Penda, and Ramatoulaye are all
committed to change; each one is involved in the strike, and each also demonstrates dignity and
eloquence. Fa Keïta retains his nobility in the face of torture, Penda in the face of ostracism, and
Ramatoulaye in the face of enormous want and deprivation. Through it all stands Bakayoko, who
single-mindedly pursues change, although he understands that change cannot be abrupt; it must
be anchored in the past. Hence his concern for tradition, of which the novel’s women are symbols.
Seydou Badian Kouyaté of Mali wrote a play about the Zulu leader Shaka: La Mort de
Chaka (1962; The Death of Shaka). Aké Loba of Côte d’Ivoire wrote Kocoumbo, l’étudiant
noir (1960; “Kocoumbo, the Black Student”), which treats the negative efforts of France on
traditional African values. His Les Fils de Kouretcha (1970; “The Sons of Kouretcha”) is a study of the
effects of industrialization on traditional societies. Olympe Bhêly-Quénum of Benin wrote the
novel Un Piège sans fin (1960; Snares Without End), which focuses on the African traditional past.
The Senegalese writer Sheikh Hamidou Kane wrote L’Aventure ambiguë (1961; Ambiguous
Adventure), a novel that considers the African and Muslim identity of its main character, Samba,
within the context of Western philosophical thought. In his novel Le Soleil noir point (1962; “The
Sun a Black Dot”), Charles Nokan of Côte d’Ivoire deals with efforts to bring a nation to freedom.

In Africa’s postindependence period, similar themes persisted but were readjusted to conform to
worlds in which new societies were being forged. Many French-language novels of the last decades
of the 20th century deal with familial struggles within a traditional society that can never again be
the same. Maimouna Abdoulaye of Senegal wrote Un Cri du coeur (1986; “A Cry from the Heart”), a
novel dealing with women living in an indifferent male society. Josette Abondio of Côte d’Ivoire is
the author of Kouassi Koko…ma mère (1993; “Kouassi Koko…My Mother”), a novel about a woman
whose existence narrows with the death of her male partner. Marie Thérèse Assiga-Ahanda of
Cameroon wrote the novel Sociétés africaines et “High Society” (1978; “African Societies and ‘High
Society’”), a story about two people returning to their country after colonialism, only to find a new
kind of colonialism—an internal kind. Marie-Gisèle Aka of Côte d’Ivoire wrote Les Haillons de
l’amour (1994; “The Remnants of Love”), a novel having to do with a girl’s difficulties with her
father. A novel written in 1990 by Philomène Bassek of Cameroon deals with the plight of a mother
of 11 children who has a harsh husband. Poverty and the upper classes preoccupy Aminata Sow Fall
of Senegal in Le Jujubier du patriarche (1993; “The Patriarch’s Jujube”). The Gabonese writer
Justine Mintsa writes of tragic life in a contemporary African village in a novel published in 2000.

The relationship between Africa and Europe remained a theme through the end of the 20th
century. Aïssatou Cissokho, a Senegalese writer, in Dakar, la touriste autochtone (1986; “Dakar, the
Native Tourist”), depicts a character returning from Europe and finding things much the same in
Dakar. In a 1999 novel, the Cameroonian novelist Nathalie Etoké tells the story of an African who is
an illegal immigrant in Paris. A young African woman in Paris is the focus of Gisèle Hountondji
in Une Citronnelle dans la neige (1986; “Lemongrass in the Snow”). Henri Lopes is a Congolese
novelist, as is Maguy Kabamba, who wrote La Dette coloniale (1995; “The Colonial Debt”), depicting
Africa and Europe as seen through the eyes of a young African student.

Portuguese

The literature in Portuguese of Cape Verde often focuses on the affinities and the strains between

Portugal and Cape Verde. Escapism is a theme in some of the poetry. In the classical phase of Cape
Verdean literature, from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th, poets such as José Lopes
da Silva (Saudades da pátria [1952; “Homesickness”]) emphasized Europe. Januário Leite
(Poesias[1952]) and Mário Pinto (Ensaios poéticos [1911; “Poetic Essays”]) wrote nationalistic
poetry. Other early poets include Pedro Monteiro Cardoso, who published Jardim das Hespérides in
1926, and Eugénio Tavares, who was among the first Cape Verdean writers to publish in Crioulo,
the Portuguese creole language widely used on the islands. António Pedro wrote a book of exotic
poems published in 1929. These early classical poets struggled with the tension between Europe
and Africa and between the Portuguese language and Crioulo, the Portuguese creole used on the
islands. Brazil was also to become a crucial theme.

In 1936 there was a literary revolution when Claridade (“Clarity”), a literary review, appeared. It

was published nine times between 1936 and 1960 and had a considerable influence. A number of
so-called Claridade poets emerged, deepening the tension between Africa and Europe; Jorge
Barbosa, who was among the founders of Claridade, was one of them. His first collection of poetry,
published in 1935, was nostalgic and romantic and placed its emphasis on the everyday person.

Baltazar Lopes (pseudonym Oswaldo Alcântara) wrote of the suffering of Cape Verdeans.

His Chiquinho (1947) was a Portuguese-language novel, and it fell into precisely the same pattern as
works composed elsewhere in Africa, such as Pita Nwana’s Igbo-language Omenuko (1935), Samuel
Yosia Ntara’s Nyanja novel Nthondo (1933), and Stephen Andrea Mpashi’s Bemba story Cekesoni
Aingila Ubusoja (1950); in typical heroic fashion, Chiquinho leaves the home of his birth, journeys
to the Brazilian city of São Vicente, where he is educated, then returns to his home. While Lopes
follows the traditional movement of the oral tradition, he does so with grim realism. When
Chiquinho goes to São Vicente, his experience is anything but glorious: he is out of work and
alienated from his surroundings. And his return home is not an improvement; there he finds
poverty and suffering. Lopes plays with the form of his story here. In the first part, Chiquinho’s
home world is romanticized, which is a dynamic contrast with the second part of the story: São
Vicente and the experience of aloneness and sadness. But, using irony as his device, Lopes brings
those two worlds into metaphorical union: the world of Chiquinho’s past is actually revealed in the
world of São Vicente. In the third part of the novel, when he returns to the world of his childhood,
Chiquinho discovers that it is no different from the alien world from which he has just departed. So
it is that the child has come of age and has moved through his puberty rite of passage: the fantasy
world of his childhood has been jarred into reality by his experiences in São Vicente. Realism and
fantasy thus come into union in this story, the fantasy world of childhood juxtaposed with the real
world of adulthood, and the two are experienced now as the same. Materials from the oral
tradition are the stuff of Lopes’s literary storytelling: he makes critical alterations as he moves from
the romance of the tale to the realism of the novel.

Another Claridade poet was Manuel Lopes, who was also among the journal’s founders; he was a
novelist and short-story writer as well. His poetry is suffused with a personal lyricism and with
social themes, which reflect his concern with the problems and the cultural values of Cape Verde.
His novel Chuva braba(1956; Wild Rain) addresses some of the same themes. Cape Verdean
folklore is woven into his short stories, including “O galo que cantou na baía” (1959; “The Cock that
Crowed in the Bay”).

The literary magazine Presença (“Presence”), founded in 1927, was a revolutionary Portuguese

publication, urging a break with the Portuguese past and encouraging ties to Cape
Verde. Claridade led in 1944 to the founding of a new review, Certeza (“Certainty”), and with it
came a new generation of poets, including António Aurélio Gonçalves, Aguinaldo Fonseca, António
Nunes, Sérgio Frusoni, and Djunga, who infused Cape Verdean literature with a new, youthful spirit
that retained a continued emphasis on life in the islands. This generation also represented a new
political voice, demanding change and reform.

São Tomé and Príncipe also produced writing in Portuguese during the first half of the 20th
century. Caetano da Costa Alegre wrote poetry, published posthumously as Versos in 1916, that
deals with the tension between Africa and Portugal. João Maria de Fonseca Viana de
Almeida’s Maiá Pòçon: contos africanos (1937; “Maiá Pòçon: African Stories”) centres on
racial prejudice and self-awareness. Francisco José Tenreiro, influenced by Aimé Césaire, was an
early Negritude poet; his poetry appears in Ilha de nome santo (1942; “Island of the Holy Name”).

African literature in Portuguese in Angola has its origins in a book of poetry written by José da Silva
Maia Ferreira, Espontaneidades da minha alma (1849; “My Soul’s Spontaneous Outpourings”). But
the most significant early figure was Joaquim Dias Cordeiro da Matta, whose book of
poetry Delírios (“Delirium”) was published in 1887. A number of newspapers and journals provided
possibilities for authors to publish their work in these early years, but this was not
a cultivated practice. A novel was serialized in 1929: António de Assis Júnior’s O segredo da
morte (“The Dead Girl’s Secret”), a story of racial conflict and acculturation. Óscar Ribas wrote
novels and poetry; his novel Uango-feitiço(1951; “The Evil Spell”) incorporates local oral tradition.
The poetry and prose of Geraldo Bessa Victor reveal the struggle of a writer caught between
Portuguese and African traditions. Fernando Monteiro de Castro Soromenho wrote novels,
including Terra morta (1949; Dying Land) and Viragem (1957; “The Turn”), that depict the impact of
colonialism on the Angolan people. Born in Portugal, the poet Tomaz Vieira da Cruz both struggled
with and embraced a sense of exile during the decades he spent in Angola. The Movimento dos
Jovens Intelectuais (Movement of Young Intellectuals) in 1947 and 1948 emphasized Angolan
traditions and folklore, influencing such writers as Agostinho Neto, Mário Pinto de Andrade, and
Viriato da Cruz.

Angolan poets often dealt with relations between blacks and whites, as Ernesto Lara Filho did in
his Picada de Marimbondo (1961; “The Sting of Marimbondo”). The publisher Imbondeiro
encouraged the publication of works by Angolan authors, who continued to struggle with racial
conflicts and the plight of the assimilado (those assimilated to Portuguese culture and Roman
Catholicism). Mário António wrote of the loss of the African past, and Luandino Vieira (pseudonym
of José Vieira Mateus da Graça) described life in the Angolan city of Luanda (Luuanda [1963]). In
1961 he was arrested and sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment. From the middle of the 20th
century the writing of poetry was encouraged by the Sociedade Cultural de Angola (Angolan
Cultural Society).

Pepetela (Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos) wrote novels, such as Mayombe (1980; Eng.
trans. Mayombe), about the civil war that followed Angola’s independence in 1975. He also looked
to the more distant past: Yaka(1984; Eng. trans. Yaka) deals with 19th-century Angola,
and Lueji (1989) is a story of an African princess of the 17th century. His A geração da utopia (1992;
“A Generation of Utopia”) takes the country’s anticolonial struggle as its theme. In 1997 he won the
Camões Prize, the most important prize in Lusophone literature. Manuel Pedro Pacavira’s
novel Nzinga Mbandi (1975) depicts an African queen, Nzinga, of the 16th and 17th centuries and
describes relations between Angolans and Portuguese. History is also the context for José Eduardo
Agualusa’s novels A Conjura (1989), which focuses on the city of Luanda, with fictional characters
that espouse nationalistic views worked into a context of historical figures, and Nação
crioula (1997; Creole), a 19th-century adventure set in Angola, Brazil, and Portugal.

In Mozambique, João Albasini was, in 1918, one of the founders of O Brado Africano (“The African
Roar”), a bilingual weekly in Portuguese and Ronga in which many of Mozambique’s writers had
their work first published. Albasini’s collection of short stories O livro da dor (“The Book of Sorrow”)
was published in 1925. Rui de Noronha composed poetry, collected in Sonetos (1943; “Sonnets”),
addressed to his patria do misterio (“mysterious homeland”). Caetano Campo, a Portuguese
journalist, wrote stories and poetry; one of his books of poetry, Nyaka (1942), is a nostalgic view of
Africa. Clima (1959; “Climate”) is a collection of poetry by Orlando Mendes, a Portuguese born in
Mozambique. João Dias wrote Godido e outros contos (1952; “Godido and Other Stories”); he was
Mozambique’s first African-born writer of modern prose. The works of poet Augusto de Conrado
include Fibras d’um coração (1931; “Fibres of a Heart”) and Divagações (1938). In 1941 the
periodical Itinerário was founded, and numerous new writers published their first works in this
journal.

Nationalist and political literature was important to writers in Mozambique during the second half
of the 20th century. In 1952 another journal, Msaho, began publication; it included works by such
poets as Alberto Lacerda and Noémia de Sousa. Marcelino dos Santos (Kalungano) wrote poetry
steeped in African tradition, while Rui Nogar’s poetry captured the atmosphere of Maputo, the
capital of Mozambique. José Craveirinha consciously evolved new poetic forms at a time when
attempts were being made to create a distinctively Mozambican literature (Moçambicanidade). He
had a major role to play in these efforts. In his poetry can be found realism, folklore, and Negritude.
Another journal appeared in 1957, Paralelo 20 (“The 20th Parallel”), that emphasized Mozambican
prose and verse. The newspaper Notícias (“News”) in 1958 and 1959 encouraged creative
Mozambican writing. O amor diurno (1962; “Love Day by Day”) is a collection of poetry by
Fernando Couto. Important poets during the second half of the 20th century include Virgílio de
Lemos, whose work was banned (he was also imprisoned), and Rui Knopfli, whose work includes O
país dos outros (1959; “The Country Belonging to Others”). Heliodoro Baptista’s poetry in A Filha
de Thandi (1991) is poetry of intensity, with its emphasis on form and image. Luís Carlos
Patraquim’s Vinte e tal novas formulações e uma elegia carnívora (1991) is of the same quality.
Vieira Simões and Ilídio Rocha wrote short stories.

Luís Bernardo Honwana, a Frelimo militant who was jailed for several years in the 1960s, wrote
short stories collected in Nós matámos o Cão-Tinhoso (1964; We Killed Mangy-Dog & Other
Stories). Mia Couto wrote Terra sonâmbula(1992; Sleepwalking Land); its publication was a major
event in prose writing in Mozambique. Couto moves between reality and fantasy in his writing. In A
varanda de frangipani (1996; Under the Frangipani), for instance, a man returns from the dead to
become a spirit that moves into the mind of a Mozambican police inspector. Couto blends folklore
and historical events, such as Mozambique’s civil war, into this tale. Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa wrote
the novel Ualalapi (1987), which deals with an African king who struggled against Portuguese
colonialism. Paulina Chiziane wrote Balada de amor ao vento(1990), a novel that looks more
realistically and less romantically at the African past and that blends the fantasy of folklore with
realism. Short-story writers of the late 20th century include Macelo Panguana (As vozes que falam
de verdade[1987], A balada dos deuses [1991]) and Suleiman Cassamo. Lília Momplé published the
short-story collection Ninguèm mataou Suhura (1988; “Nobody Killed Suhura”) and the
novels Neighbours (1995; Eng. trans. Neighbours: The Story of Murder) and Os olhos da cobra
verde (1997; “The Eyes of the Green Cobra”).