The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945

Simon Gikandi and Evan Mwangi

June, 2007
Cloth, 224 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12520-8
$77.50 / £53.50

"An invaluable resource for literary research and scholarship on East Africa." — James Ogude, African Studies Review

"This guide offers valuable information . . . Recommended." — Choice

"A welcome addition to the study of anglophone African literature and should not be missing from African Studies and Literature Libraries." — Christine Matzke, Research in African LiteraturesHumboldt-Universitat Zu Berlin

"Should be included in the reference collection of all institutes of higher education . . . A must for serious researchers." — Valentine K. Muyumba, American Reference Books Annual

"For students, scholars, researchers and general readers, this excellent guide presents a most comprehensive material for a deeper engagement with East African literature in all its facets and contexts. The dialectic it unearths between colonialism and nationalism is one that may also be revealed in literatures from other regions of Africa. What is new, exciting, and valuable in this particular study is the sense we get of the region’s distinctive impact on the character and direction of its literature. In extending and redefining the East African region itself the authors demonstrate how literary traditions can actually extend geographic areas. For the first time a book on East African writing probes the impact of regional institutions like Makerere University, the University of East Africa, and the East African Literature Bureau on the development of a regional literature. East African literature may appear to occupy a minor place in African Literature yet in this guide its literary history complicates and challenges some of our general assumptions about the making of African literature." — Nana Wilson-Tagoe, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

"This is a work that nobody interested in the emerging corpus of world literature can afford to be without." — Abiola Irele, Harvard University

Related Subjects

• African Studies
• Literary Criticism and Theory
• Reference

Series

• Columbia Guides to Literature Since 1945

About the Author

Simon Gikandi is professor of English at Princeton University. His major fields of research and teaching are the Anglophone literatures and cultures of Africa, India, the Caribbean, and postcolonial Britian, the "Black" Atlantic, and the African diaspora. He is the author of numerous books, including Writing in Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, which was chosen as a Choice Outstanding Academic Publication. He is also the coeditor of The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature and the editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of African Literature. Evan Mwangi is assistant professor of English specializing in twentieth-century Anglophone African literature at Northwestern University. Previously, he has taught at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and Ohio University, and his published works cover different areas of African oral narrative, theater, poetry, and fiction.Simon Gikandi is Professor of English at Princeton University. His major Fields of Research and Teaching are the Anglophone Literatures and Cultures of Africa, India, the Caribbean, and Postcolonial Britain, the "Black" Atlantic and the African Diaspora. He is the author of many books including Writing in Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, which was a Choice Outstanding Academic Publication for 2004. He is the co-editor of The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature and the editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of African Literature. Evan Mwangi teaches 20th Century Anglophone African Literature at Northwestern University, Illinois. He has previously taught at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and Ohio University, Athens. His other published works cover different areas of African oral literature, theatre, poetry, and fiction. His projects in progress include “African Sexualities in the Era of Aids” and “Textualizing Subjectivity: African Literature and Identity Politics."

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