“WHAT IS AFRICAN FICTION?”

The urge to put things into categories seems to satisfy some deep human need, and in matters—and by virtue of questions—such as this, critics and historians of literature have been, indeed, very human people. 

In his somewhat controversial book, The Emergence of African Fiction, Charles R. Larson observes a couple of things about the African novel. One, that the African novel is frequently different from its Western counterpart due to differences in cultural backgrounds. Two, that in spite of several typical unities generally considered to hold the Western novel together, the African writer creates new unities that give their fiction form and pattern. 

While Larson’s observations are quite valid, they seem too convenient and vague. Questions abound: why compare the African novel with the Western novel in the process of observing the African novel? can the African novel be contemplated without the Western novel within earshot? Why is Charles, who is definitely white, observing African literature? who is fit to examine what African fiction is or looks like? 

In answering the question of what African fiction is or looks like, Chinua Achebe, after declaring in one of his essays, ‘Thoughts on the African Novel’, that “the African novel has to be about Africa”, continues: “But Africa is not only a geographical expression; it is also a metaphysical landscape—it is in fact a view of the world and of the whole cosmos perceived from a particular position.” Achebe is implying here that anyone who writes about Africa (imaginatively) is writing African fiction. Yet, what does this “particular position” mean? Does a shift—whatever its magnitude—from this position mean denial or alienation?  

It is impossible to talk about African fiction without mentioning the African writer and what they represent. For instance, when he became the first African winner of the Booker Prize in 1991, Ben Okri was asked to describe himself. In response, the writer said: “I think Ben Okri is a writer who works very hard to sing from all the things that affect him. I don’t know if he’s an African writer. I never think of myself in terms of any classification. Literature doesn’t have a country.” 

In recent times, with the increasing migration of Africans to the West, this so-called “African fiction” has become cosmopolitan. Writers like the Nigerian Teju Cole and the Nigerian-Ghanaian Taiye Selasi have defied and denied categorization. In Teju’s book, Open City, the narrator is half-Nigerian and half-German, and is wandering the streets of New York and Brussels. In her short essay, ‘Bye-Bye Babar’, Taiye Selasi introduces a neologism, “Afropolitan”: “[We] are Afropolitans – the newest generation of African emigrants…Most of us are multilingual…not citizens, but Africans of the world”. 

Selasi’s mention of multilingualism brings us back to Chinua Achebe in his aforementioned essay, where, considering language as an important tool in fiction, he questions what really is the African language: “…what is a non-African language? English and French certainly. But what about Arabic? What about Swahili even? Is it then a question of how long the language has been present on African soil?… For me it is…a pragmatic matter. A language spoken by Africans on African soil, a language in which Africans write, justifies itself.” 

In the end, African fiction is more of an illusion than a reality. A writer, whether in America or Africa, is, first, an observer of the world, and should only be pursuing a clarity of vision that would reveal to them the complexities of their identity.

References: 

1. Larson, C. R. (1972), The Emergence of African Fiction. Indiana. Indiana University Press. 

2. Achebe, C. (1973), ‘Thoughts on the African Novel’. Nova Scotia. Dalhousie Review, vol. 53, no. 4.

3. ‘Talking with Ben Okri’, https://emeagwali.com/nigeria/biography/ben-okri-19jul92.html

4. Teju, C. (2011), Open City. Manhattan. Random House. 

5. ‘Bye-Bye Bar’, https://thelip.robertsharp.co.uk/2005/03/03/bye-bye-barbar/