This study examines the war novel in Africa as a case study of the genre, delineating the genre’s features across literary traditions. By examining the war novel in depth, it also complicates our understanding of the novel in African literature more specifically, especially since the war novel remains understudied when compared to the more widely read genre of the African Bildungsroman. Looking beyond the cliché depiction of child soldiers, the book argues that war fiction provides an opportunity to address collective rights and tell the history of the dispossessed. The narration of war reveal ... More

This study examines the war novel in Africa as a case study of the genre, delineating the genre’s features across literary traditions. By examining the war novel in depth, it also complicates our understanding of the novel in African literature more specifically, especially since the war novel remains understudied when compared to the more widely read genre of the African Bildungsroman. Looking beyond the cliché depiction of child soldiers, the book argues that war fiction provides an opportunity to address collective rights and tell the history of the dispossessed. The narration of war reveals the convergence of naturalism and humanitarianism, an ethos which takes up the responsibility for the suffering of others. Both these sensibilities are present in culturally hybrid forms in the African war novel, reflecting its syncretism as a narrative practice engaged with the colonial and postcolonial history of the continent. The book argues that the war novel is a form of people’s history that participates in a political struggle for the human rights of the dispossessed and subverts the politics of pity set in motion by the humanitarian discourse of war. Analyses of works by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Nuruddin Farah, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o among others figure prominently as do extended discussions of key conflicts such as the Mau Mau war, the Nigerian Civil War, and Zimbabwe’s wars of liberation. Issues of gender are also foregrounded through the close attention paid to women and war.