Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

ALT 39: Speculative and Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781800102897
Platform/Publisher: Cambridge Core / Boydell & Brewer
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited

Explores the ways in which African writers have approached speculative fiction through in-depth articles on the use of language, terminology and the genealogy of the works.

Over the past two decades, there has been a resurgence in the writing of African and African diaspora speculative and science fiction writing. Recent discussions around the "rise of science-fiction and fantasy" in Africa have led to a push-back, in which writers and scholars have suggested that science fiction and fantasy is not a new phenomenon in African literature, but that the deep past of the African world and its complex and mysterious foundations still register in burgeoning modern literary productions. Such influences can be seen in early twentieth-century writers such as D.O. Fagunwa's classic novel (1938) Ogboji Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale ( The Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga ), the mythopoeia of Elechi Amadi's The Concubine (1966) as well as the dystopian writing of Buchi Emecheta in The Rape of Shavi (1983). This volume shows this long tradition of speculative literature in examining African classics such as Kojo Laing's Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) and the oeuvre of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. The volume also critically examines modern African texts from writers including Nnedi Okorafor, Namwali Serpell and Masande Ntshanga, as well as critically looking at the terms 'Afrofuturism' and 'Africanfuturism' vis-à-vis their particular cultural aesthetics and suitability in describing tradition rooted African speculative arts.

This volume also includes a Literary Supplement.

Guest Editors: LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE (Associate Professor in African and Caribbean Literature, Durham University) and CHIMALUM NWANKWO (Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies, Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria).

Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint)
Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of English University of Central Florida).

Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA. He is Series Editor of African Literature Today . His publications include A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2017), Emerging Perspectives on Nawal El Saadawi (2010) , and the children's book Uzoechi: A Story of African Childhood (2012).Egbunike Louisa Uchum :

LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE is Associate Professor in African and Caribbean Literature, Durham University). She has been guest lecturer to institutions including Wellesley College, The University of the West Indies and The University of Bremen. She has published in journals including African Literature Today and Matatu and has chapters published in edited books including A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.Nwankwo Chimalum :

CHIMALUM NWANKWO is Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies, Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria. He has previously taught at the Universities of Nigeria, East Carolina-Greenville, North Carolina A & T State University-Greensboro, where he was Professor of English and World Literatures and Former Chair of the Department of English, Nigeria Turkish Nile University in Abuja. He was Guest Editor of ALT 30 Reflections & Retrospectives. His other critical studies include Of the Deepest Shadows and The Prisons of Fire (2010) and Toward the kingdom of Woman and Man: The Works of Ngugi wa Thiongo (1992). He is also an acclaimed poet, who has published five volumes of poetry, including The Womb in the Heart and Other Poems and Lovesong for Julian Assange & Poems from Love Mountain.Egbunike Louisa Uchum :

LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE is Associate Professor in African and Caribbean Literature, Durham University). She has been guest lecturer to institutions including Wellesley College, The University of the West Indies and The University of Bremen. She has published in journals including African Literature Today and Matatu and has chapters published in edited books including A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.Nwankwo Chimalum :

CHIMALUM NWANKWO is Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies, Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria. He has previously taught at the Universities of Nigeria, East Carolina-Greenville, North Carolina A & T State University-Greensboro, where he was Professor of English and World Literatures and Former Chair of the Department of English, Nigeria Turkish Nile University in Abuja. He was Guest Editor of ALT 30 Reflections & Retrospectives. His other critical studies include Of the Deepest Shadows and The Prisons of Fire (2010) and Toward the kingdom of Woman and Man: The Works of Ngugi wa Thiongo (1992). He is also an acclaimed poet, who has published five volumes of poetry, including The Womb in the Heart and Other Poems and Lovesong for Julian Assange & Poems from Love Mountain.