Course info

Welcome back to The African Novel. Having met during the face to face facilitation, we will continue to engage with the course material here on the online platform. Just as a reminder, in this course we will read novels written by African writers which deal with a broad range of African experience which includes cultural, historical, political, social and aesthetic. We will look at the development of the African novel from its oral foundations to its modern form. We will go  on to examine the contextual factors that have given rise to the African novel and how those factors have shaped or influenced the thematic concerns of the writers. For instance, we will consider how Africa's experience of colonialism did give rise to the African novel; how writers have engaged with the colonial experience. 

We shall go further to read and analyze selected African novels and examine how they reflect the different sociopolitical issues that have made writers to write as well as the ideological leanings of those novels. We wills also analyze the novels for their thematic concerns, characterization, style, conflict and other literary elements.

I invite you to make use of the materials that have been uploaded by my colleague, Dr. Kasembeli as well as those that I shall be uploading as we go on. You will find the materials from both of us useful for the course.

This is a reading course so you will have to invest adequate time in reading the primary texts/novels and other supporting reading materials. If you have questions or challenges, be free to contact me for help.