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Ben Okri
born 15 March 1959) is a Nigerian poet and novelist. Okri is considered one of the foremost African authors in the post-modern and post-colonial traditions, and has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.
Since he published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows (1980), Okri has risen to an international acclaim, and he often is described as one of Africa's leading writers. His best known work, The Famished Road, which was awarded the 1991 Booker Prize, along with Songs of Enchantment and Infinite Riches make up a trilogy that follows the life of Azaro, a spirit-child narrator, through the social and political turmoil of an African nation reminiscent of Okri's remembrance of war-torn Nigeria.
The Famished Road is a novel written by Nigerian author Ben Okri. Published in 1991, the story of the novel follows Azaro, an abiku or spirit child, living in an unnamed, most likely Nigerian, city. The novel employs a unique narrative style incorporating the spirit world with the "real" world in what some have classified as magical realism. Others have labeled it African Traditional Religion realism. Still others choose to simply call the novel fantasy literature. The book exploits the belief in the coexistence of the spiritual and material worlds that is a defining aspect of traditional African life. Azaro is an abiku, or spirit-child, from the ghetto of an unknown city in Africa. He is constantly harassed by his sibling spirits from another world who want him to leave this mortal life and return to the world of spirits, sending many emissaries to bring him back. Azaro has stubbornly refused to leave this life owing to his love for his mother and father. He is the witness of many happenings in the mortal realm. His father works as a labourer while his mother sells items as a hawker. Madame Koto, the owner of a local bar, asks Azaro to visit her establishment, convinced that he will bring good luck and customers to her bar. Meanwhile, his father prepares to be a boxer after convincing himself and his family that he has a talent to be a pugilist. Two opposing political parties try to bribe or coerce the residents to vote for them.

Nuruddin Farah
born 24 November 1945) is a Somali novelist Farah has garnered acclaim as one of the greatest contemporary writers in the world, his prose having earned him accolades including the Premio Cavour in Italy, the Kurt Tucholsky Prize in Sweden, the Lettre Ulysses Award in Berlin, and in 1998, the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In the same year, the French edition of his novel Gifts won the St Malo Literature Festival’s prize. In addition, Farah is a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
After releasing an early short story in his native Somali language, Farah shifted to writing in English while still attending university in India. His books have been translated into 17 languages.
His first novel, From a Crooked Rib (1970), told the story of a nomad girl who flees from an arranged marriage to a much older man. Published by Heinemann Educational Books (HEB) in their African Writers Series, the novel earned him mild but international acclaim. On a tour of Europe following the publication of A Naked Needle (HEB, 1976), Farah was warned that the Somali government planned to arrest him over its contents. Rather than return and face imprisonment, Farah began a self-imposed exile that would last for 22 years, teaching in the United States, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Sudan, India and Nigeria.
Farah describes his purpose for writing as an attempt "to keep my country alive by writing about it", and for Nadine Gordimer he was one of the continent's "true interpreters". His trilogies of novels – "Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship" (1980–83) and "Blood in the Sun" (1986–99) – form the core of his work. First published by Allison and Busby, "Variations" included Sweet and Sour Milk (1979), Sardine (1981) and Close Sesame (1983), and was well received in a number of countries. Farah's reputation was cemented by his most famous novel, Maps (1986), the first part of his "Blood in the Sun" trilogy. Maps, which is set during the Ogaden conflict of 1977, employs the innovative technique of second-person narration for exploring questions of cultural identity in a post-independence world. Farah followed this with Gifts (1993) and Secrets (1998), both of which earned awards. His most recent trilogy comprises Links (2004), Knots (2007) and Crossbones (2011). His latest novel Hiding in Plain Sight was published in 2014.
Farah is also a playwright, whose plays include work for the stage — A Dagger in Vacuum (produced Mogadiscio, 1970), The Offering (produced Colchester, Essex, 1975), Yussuf and His Brothers (produced Jos, Nigeria, 1982) — and for radio: Tartar Delight, 1980 (Germany), and A Spread of Butter.

Ngugi Wa Thiong`O
born 5 January 1938 is a Kenyan writer; Ngũgĩ was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya-> Ngũgĩ has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His son is the author Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ.
His debut novel, Weep Not, Child, was published in May 1964, becoming the first novel in English to be published by a writer from East Africa. Njoroge, a young boy, is urged to attend school by his mother. He is the first one of his family able to go to school. His family lives on the land of Jacobo, an African made rich by his dealings with white settlers, namely Mr. Howlands, the most powerful land owner in the area. Njoroge's brother Kamau works as an apprentice to a carpenter, while Boro, the eldest living son, is troubled by his experiences while in forced service during World War II, including witnessing the death of his elder brother. Ngotho, Njoroge's father and a respected man in the surrounding area, tends Mr. Howlands' crops, but is motivated by his passion to preserve his ancestral land, rather than for any compensation or loyalty. One day, black workers call for a strike to obtain higher wages. Ngotho is ambivalent about participating in the strike because he fears he will lose his job. However, he decides to go to the gathering, even though his two wives do not agree. At the demonstration, there are calls for higher wages. Suddenly, the white police inspector brings Jacobo to the gathering to pacify the native people. Jacobo tries to end to the strike. Ngotho attacks Jacobo, and the result is a riot where two people are killed. Jacobo survives and swears revenge. Ngotho loses his job and Njoroge’s family is forced to move. Njoroge’s brothers fund his education and seem to lose respect for their father. Mwihaki, Jacobo's daughter and Njoroge's best friend, enters a girls' only boarding school, leaving Njoroge relatively alone. He reflects upon her leaving, and realizes that he was embarrassed by his father's actions towards Jacobo. For this reason, Njoroge is not upset by her exit and their separation. Njoroge switches to another school. For a time, everyone's attention is focused on the upcoming trial of Jomo Kenyatta – a revered leader of the movement. Many blacks think that he is going to bring forth Kenya’s independence. But Jomo loses the trial and is imprisoned. This results in further protests and greater suppression of the black population. Jacobo and a white landowner, Mr. Howlands, fight against the rising activities of the Mau Mau, an organization striving for Kenyan economic, political, and cultural independence. Jacobo accuses Ngotho of being the leader of the Mau Mau and tries to imprison the whole family. Meanwhile, the situation in the country is deteriorating. Six black men are taken out of their houses and executed in the woods. One day Njoroge meets Mwihaki again, who has returned from boarding school. Although Njoroge had planned to avoid her due to the conflict between their fathers, their friendship is unaffected. Njoroge passes an important exam that allows him to advance to High School. His village is proud of him, and collects money to pay Njoroge's High School tuition. Several months later, Jacobo is murdered in his office by a member of the Mau Mau. Mr. Howlands has Njoroge removed from school for questioning. Both father and son are brutally beaten before release and Ngotho is left barely alive. Although there doesn't seem to be a connection between Njoroge's family and the murder, it is eventually revealed that Njoroge's brothers are behind the assassination, and that Boro, is the real leader of the Mau Mau. Ngotho soon dies from his injuries and Njoroge finds out that his father was protecting his brothers. Kamau has been imprisoned for life. Only Njoroge and his two mothers remain free, and Njoroge is left as the sole provider of his two mothers. Njoroge fears that he cannot make ends meet; he gives up hope of continuing in scho

ol and loses faith in God. Njoroge asks for Mwihaki's support, but she is angry because of her father’s death. When he finally pledges his love to her, she refuses to leave with him, realizing her obligation to Kenya and her mother. Njoroge decides to leave town and makes an attempt at suicide; however, he fails when his mothers find him before he is able to hang himself. The novel closes with Njoroge feeling hopeless, and ashamed of cowardice.
His second novel, The River Between, came out in 1965. The River Between, which has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians, is currently on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. He left Leeds without completing his thesis on Caribbean literature, for which his studies had focused on George Lamming, about whom Ngũgĩ said in his 1972 collection of essays Homecoming: "He evoked for me, an unforgettable picture of a peasant revolt in a white-dominated world. And suddenly I knew that a novel could be made to speak to me, could, with a compelling urgency, touch cords deep down in me. His world was not as strange to me as that of Fielding, Defoe, Smollett, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens, D. H. Lawrence."
Ngũgĩ's 1967 novel A Grain of Wheat marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; he changed his name to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili.
In 1976 he helped set up The Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre which, among other things, organised African Theatre in the area. The uncensored political message of his 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) provoked the then Kenyan Vice-President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. While detained in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Ngũgĩ wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ (Devil on the Cross), on prison-issued toilet paper.
His later works include Detained, his prison diary (1981), Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and Matigari (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folktale.
A GRAIN OF WHEAT
The events of the novel take place in the days of 1963 before and on the day of Uhuru, Kenya’s liberation from British colonial rule. The novel also features flashbacks of the past. Mugo, an introverted villager of Thabai, does not want to give a speech at Uhuru, even though town elders ask him to. The village thinks him a hero for his stoicism and courage while he was in detention during Kenya’s State of Emergency, but he labors under a secret: he betrayed their beloved Mau Mau fighter, Kihika. He is restless and can achieve no peace in the village. Kihika had joined the Mau Mau as a young man and attained fame for capturing the police garrison at Mahee and killing the cruel District Officer (‘DO’) Robson, but after Mugo betrayed him in secret, he was captured and hanged. Those planning Uhuru want to honor him. Mugo had betrayed Kihika because he was unsettled by the young man’s zeal and because of the reward offered for his head, but as soon as he betrayed him he felt remorse. Most people, including General R. and Koina, two Mau Mau soldiers, believe Karanja was the one who betrayed Kihika. They plan on executing him at Uhuru. Mugo was not the only man from Thabai who spent time in detention camp. Gikonyo, a well-respected businessman and former carpenter, was also taken to a camp. Before the camp he was very much in love with his beautiful wife Mumbi, the sister of Kihika. He had won her love even though many, including Karanja, a friend of Kihika, sought her love as well. He dreamt of her while he was away, and was horrified to find out that Mumbi had borne a child by Karanja while he was gone those years. He does not believ

e they can ever repair their relationship, and he throws himself into his work. Karanja works at Githima, a Forest Research Station started by the British. He tries to cultivate the approval of the DO, Roger Thompson, who is stationed there with his wife Margery. Thompson was once destined for an illustrious career, but it was derailed by a hunger strike and violence at Rira, the camp where Mugo was. Now Thompson is at Githima, but is preparing to return to Britain because he does not want to be around when whites are no longer in charge. Karanja did not join the freedom movement but rather started to work for the whiteman, first joining the homeguard and then becoming Chief during the Emergency. This incurred a lot of resentment from people; however, Karanja was simply looking out for himself. Mumbi, distressed that her husband no longer loves her, comes to see Mugo. She confides in him the story of how she and Gikonyo fell in love, and how sad she was when he was away in camp. She only fell for Karanja’s advances when she heard Gikonyo was returning and became deliriously happy. She begs Mugo to come to Uhuru; on a second visit to him, she begs him again. Mugo becomes violent and says he betrayed Kihika. Mumbi is shocked, but she does not want any more blood shed for her brother. Uhuru arrives, the day first rainy and then sunny. People are joyful and all of them want to see Mugo, even though he has said he is not coming. There are games and speeches. There is also a spontaneous race, and Gikonyo and Karanja find themselves competing with each other (much as they competed in a race for Mumbi’s attention long ago). They stumble, though, and Gikonyo breaks his arm and has to go to the hospital. General R. gives a speech instead of Mugo and calls for the traitor to step forward, assuming it will be Karanja. Mugo comes out of the crowd and says it is he who did it; he feels a sense of freedom at first, quickly followed by terror. No one accosts him, and the confused crowd parts and lets him go. Later, General R. and Koina come to arrest him and tell him he will have a private trial. Mugo makes peace with this, deciding he will accept his punishment. Some of the village elders feel that Uhuru did not go well, and that there is something wrong. Karanja heads back to Githima. He is unhappy and considers killing himself in front of a train. Ultimately, he decides against this. Gikonyo wakes in the hospital and finds himself ready to make amends with Mumbi. When she visits him, he tells her he is ready to speak of the child he has assiduously ignored since he came back. She tells him it must wait until they can have a serious and heartfelt discussion of their wants and needs. He is happy, and plans to carve a stool featuring an image of a pregnant Mumbi.
*The title derives from 1 Corinthians 15:36: "How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies"; the verse John 12:24 also applies: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” It is the penultimate book of Ngugi's to be written in English before he began writing in Gikuyu.
Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature (Heinemann Educational, 1986), by Kenyan novelist and post-colonial theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, is a collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity. The book, which advocates for linguistic decolonization, is one of Ngũgĩ's best-known and most-cited non-fiction publications, helping to cement him as a preeminent voice theorizing the "language debate" in post-colonial studies. Ngũgĩ describes the book as "a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism, and in teaching of literature..." Decolonising the Mind is split into four essays: "The Language of African Literature," "The Language of African Theatre," "The Language of African Fiction," and "The Quest for Relevan

ce." Several of the book's chapters originated as lectures, and apparently this format gave Ngũgĩ "the chance to pull together in a connected and coherent form the main issues on the language question in literature...." The book offers a distinctly anti-imperialist perspective on the "continuing debate...about the destiny of Africa" and language's role in both combatting and perpetrating imperialism and the conditions of neocolonialism in African nations. The book is also Ngũgĩ's "farewell to English," and it addresses the "language problem" for African authors. Ngũgĩ focuses on questions about the African writer's linguistic medium (should one write in one's indigenous language, or a hegemonic language like French or English?), the writer's intended audience, and the writer's purpose in writing. Decolonising the Mind is a meld of autobiography, post-colonial theory, pedagogy, African history, and literary criticism. Ngũgĩ dedicated Decolonising the Mind "to all those who write in African languages, and to all those who over the years have maintained the dignity of the literature, culture, philosophy, and other treasures carried by African languages."
Novels
Weep Not, Child, (1964)
The River Between, (1965)
A Grain of Wheat, (1967, 1992)
Petals of Blood (1977)
Caitaani mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross, 1980)
Matigari ma Njiruungi, 1986 (Matigari, translated into English by Wangui wa Goro, 1989)
Mũrogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow, 2004)
Short story collections
A Meeting in the Dark (1974)
Secret Lives, and Other Stories, (1976, 1992)
Plays
The Black Hermit (1963)
This Time Tomorrow (three plays, including the title play, "The Rebels", and "The Wound in the Heart") (c. 1970
The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) 1956 trial of Dedan Kimathi, the celebrated Kenyan hero who led the Mau Mau rebellion against the British colonial regime in Kenya and was eventually hanged. A highly controversial character, Kimathi's life has been subject to intense propaganda by both the British government, who saw him as a vicious terrorist, and Kenyan nationalists, who viewed him as a man of great courage and commitment. Writing in the 1970s, the playwrights' response to colonialist writings about the Mau Mau movement in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi is to sing the praises of the deeds of this hero of the resistance who refused to surrender to British imperialism. It is not a reproduction of the farcical "trial" at Nyeri. Rather, according to the preface, it is "an imaginative recreation and interpretation of the collective will of the Kenyan peasants and workers in their refusal to break under sixty years of colonial torture and ruthless oppression by the British ruling classes and their continued determination to resist exploitation,oppression and new forms of enslavement."
Ngaahika Ndeenda: Ithaako ria ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want) (1977, 1982)
Essays
Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics (1972)
Writers in Politics: Essays (1981)
Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986)
Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom (1993)
Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa (The Clarendon Lectures in English Literature 1996), Oxford University Press, 1998.

Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie (1977) is a Nigerian novelist, writer of short stories, and nonfiction
Works:
1. Purple Hibiscus (2003),
○ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Hibiscus_(novel)
○ starts with an extended quote from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
○ The central character is Kambili Achike, aged fifteen for much of the period covered by the book, a member of a wealthy family dominated by her devoutly Catholic father, Eugene.

2. Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
○ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_of_a_Yellow_Sun
○ named after the flag of the shortlived nation of Biafra, is set before and during the Nigerian Civil War.

3. Americanah (2013),
○ an exploration of a young Nigerian encountering race in America, was selected by The New York Times as one of "The 10 Best Books of 2013"

4. Short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009),
5. A book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014).
6. Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was published in March 2017.

🔥Lewis Nkosi (1936 -2010)
was a South African writer, who spent 30 years in exile as a consequence of restrictions placed on him and his writing
Lewis Nkosi returned to South Africa in 2001, after a gap of nearly four decades. His final years before his death in 2010 were passed in financial difficulties and ill health


Works:

Novels (Read Summaries online and make mind maps)
1. Mating Birds, Constable, 1986,
a. narration of an educated South African black native called Ndi Sibiya. He narrates the story from prison, awaiting a death sentence.
b. Story of how a white girl (Veronica) first intentionally makes sexual contact with Sibiya and then accuses him of rape when they are seen together by a neighbor
c. He is judged by a white judge who finds him guilty and sentences him to death.
2. Underground People, Kwela Books, 2002,
a. In this novel, he moved away from the theme of inter-racial sexual relations and centred the story on the armed struggle in South Africa.
3. Mandela's Ego, Struik, 2006,
a. Dumisani Gumede a teenage who pursues a lot of women, idolizes Nelson Mandela
b. He loses his sexual energy as soon as he realizes that Mandela is imprisoned
c. Gets it back instantly after the news of Mandela's release

Collections of essays
1. Home and Exile, Longman, 1965
2. Home and Exile and other selections, Longman, 1983,
3. The Transplanted Heart: Essays on South Africa, 1975
4. Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature, Longman, 1981

Plays
1. The Rhythm of Violence (1964)
2. The Chameleon and the Lizard
3. The Black Psychiatrist (2001)

What to study? How much to study? Daily to-do list, timeline for syllabus etc.

Frantz Fanon (1925 - 1961)

Frantz Fanon (1925 -1961) was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer from the French colony of Martinique, whose works are influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism.

Works:
1. Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
○ Fanon psychoanalyzes the oppressed Black person who is perceived to have to be a lesser creature in the White world that they live in, and studies how they navigate the world through a performance of White-ness.
○ He talks about how the black person's use of a colonizer's language is seen by the colonizer as predatory, and not transformative, which in turn may create insecurity in the black's consciousness
○ Ultimately, he concludes that "mastery of language [of the white/colonizer] for the sake of recognition as white reflects a dependency that subordinates the black's humanity"

2. A Dying Colonialism (1959)
○ Year Five of the Algerian Revolution, later republished as Sociology of a Revolution and later still as A Dying Colonialism).
○ Fanon's original title was "Reality of a Nation"; however, the publisher refused to accept this title.

3. The Wretched of the Earth(1961)
○ Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre
○ In it Fanon analyzes the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for national liberation. The book includes an article which focuses on the ideas of violence and decolonization. He claims that decolonization is inherently a violent process, because the relationship between the settler and the native is a binary of opposites.
○ Ngũgĩ wa Thiango argues in Decolonizing the Mind (1992) that it is "impossible to understand what informs African writing" without reading Fanon's Wretched of the Earth.

4. Toward the African Revolution (1964)


Aimé Césaire was a particularly significant influence in Fanon's life. Césaire, a leader of the Négritude movement, was teacher and mentor to Fanon on the island of Martinique.[27] Fanon was first introduced to Négritude during his lycée days in Martinique when Césaire coined the term and presented his ideas in La Revue Tropique, the journal that he edited with his wife,