Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on interviews with Nigeria's writers, publishers, booksellers, and readers, surveys, and a reading of close to 500 Nigerian novels - from lightweight romances to literary masterpieces - this work explores how global cultural flows and local conflicts meet in the production and reception of fiction.
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2002 Best Book Award "By using extensive interviews with publishers, booksellers, and readers, along with surveys and her own insights into the novels, Griswold offers on of the few truly comprehensive views of the world of literature in Africa. It is also a wonderfully optimistic book that suggests the vitality of the written word in contemporary Nigerian life."--Choice "Griswold wears her learning lightly, using footnotes to show broader debates, keeping her text uncluttered... Bearing Witness provides a useful counterbalance to much detached, contemporary literary criticism; it demonstrates the needs for novels to be examined by scholars from a variety of disciplines."--James Gibbs, World Literature Today "It is rare to find an American scholar so committed to and successful in melding the approaches of the social sciences and the humanities as Griswold does."--Vera Zolberg, American Journal of Sociology "To those readers who have explicit memories of Nigeria, whether good or not so good: Please read Wendy Griswold's Bearing Witness. And likewise to those who have never been to Nigeria: please read Grisworld's book. In other words, for anyone with an interest in historical political, cultural, and literary development in Nigeria (and Africa in general), Bearing Witness is a very good book."--Glen Bush, African Studies Review
Table of ContentsFigures ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii Key Dates In Nigerian History xv CHAPTER 1 To Understand the Novel in Nigeria 3 In Nigeria 6 The Novel 13 To Understand 17 CHAPTER 2 The Nigerian Fiction Complex 26 The Novels 29 The Writers 38 The Business 60 The Readers 88 CHAPTER 3 Nigerian Novels 120 Village and City 12 3 Women and Men 167 Pen and Sword 208 Crime and Politics 238 CHAPTER 4 Capturing the Past and Inventing the Future 269 APPENDIX A. Nigerian novels 275 APPENDIX B. Nigerian authors 288 APPENDIX C. Coding forms 292 Notes 297 Bibliography 323 INDEX 333
