African Literatures As World Literature

Alexander Fyfe, Thomas Oliver Beebee, Madhu Krishnan

"The enormous success of writers such as Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie demonstrates that African literatures are now an international phenomenon. But the apparent global legibility of a small number of (mostly Anglophone) writers in the diaspora raises the question of how literary producers from the continent, both past and present, have situated their work in relation to the world and the kinds of material networks to which this corresponds. This collection shows how literatures from across the African continent engage with conceptualizations of "the world" in relation to local social and political issues. Focusing on a wide variety of geographic, historical, and linguistic contexts, the essays in this volume seek answers to the following questions: What are the topographies of "the world" in different literary texts and traditions? What are that world's limits, boundaries,...