Literary Criticism

The re-issue of archival volumes ALT 1 to ALT 14 makes the complete series available and provides the historical perspective of these early contributions to the literature and its criticism.

In this 10th anniversary volume, first published in 1979, Eldred Jones outlines the trend over the years since independence of "a greater degree of alienation or dissidence of the principal writers from established regimes and a movement towards a closer identification with what they see as the needs of the ordinary people. Writers increasingly found themselves in difficulties with their respective governments, with ensuing consequences of loss of favour,of exile - enforced or voluntary - or worse still of detention or imprisonment in their own countries." This issue makes a reassessment of African writing with special articles on novels, drama and poetry and particular studies ofthe work of Kofi Awoonor, Ngugi, Ezekiel Mphalele, Richard Rive, Cyprian Ekwensi, Ayi Kwei Armah, Yambo Ouologuem and Arthur Nortje.

‘A people who do not preserve their memory are a people who have forfeited their history.’ So argues Wole Soyinka, in his book The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness, and this provides the overarching thematic concept for African pasts as a whole. Colonialism for Africans is not an event encapsulated in the past, but is a history whose repercussions and traumatic consequences are still actively evolving in today’s political, historical, cultural and artistic scenes.

African pasts examines African literatures in English since the end of colonialism, investigating how they represent African history through the twin matrices of memory and trauma. Inextricably tied up with the historical conditions of Africa’s colonisation, charting the emergence of its independence, and scrutinising Africa’s contemporary neo-colonial and postcolonial states as a legacy of the colonial past, African literatures are continually preoccupied with exploring modes of representation to ‘work through’ their different traumatic colonial pasts.

African pasts covers a wide range of African literatures (drawn from West, East and Southern Africa) and a cross-section of genres – fiction, poetry, prison-narratives, postcolonial theory – and embraces such well-known writers as Soyinka, Coetzee, Ngugi and Achebe, and more recent writers such as Nuruddin Farah, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Achmat Dangor, Etienne van Heerden, Zakes Mda, Gillian Slovo and Calixthe Beyala.

Ngugi is one of the most important novelists on the contemporary world stage, and someone whose name has for many become synonymous with cultural controversy and political struggle.

Patrick William’s lucid analysis offers the most up-to-date study of Ngugi’s writing, including his most rcent collection of essays. Focusing on important aspects of Ngugi’s work which critics have hitherto ignored, and drawing on a wide range of relevant theoretical perspectives, this study examines the growing complexity of Ngugi’s accounts of the history of colonised and post-colonial Kenya. The cultural and anti-imperial politics on Ngugi’s experimentation with language and form in both novel and drama is discussed, including the important role of culture as a source of historical memory and strategies of resistance for oppressed groups.

All the novels and the major plays are studies in detail, and in addition a substantial chapter examines Ngugi’s contribution in the area of non-fiction.

Nation' and 'literature' are always inherently unstable categories but, in the case of South Africa, this instability is particularly marked. This study considers the effects local and global networks had on the publication, promotion and reception of a series of key writers and their works between 1883 and 2005, asking: who published what, where, why, and how; how and why work was construed as 'South African', what this meant, and how it affected reading. Exploring new approaches to studying colonial and postcolonial print cultures, it seeks to redress inadequately historicised or transnationally situated studies of South African writing in English.


The book is absolutely essential reading for anyone with an interest in the fields of South African, African, and general colonial and postcolonial literatures and history, as well as those with an interest print and media cultures, and the History of the Book.

Chinua Achebe has long been regarded as Africa’s foremost writer. In this major new study, Jago Morrison offers a comprehensive reassessment of his work as an author, broadcaster, editor and political thinker.

With new, historically contextualised readings of all of his major works, this is the first study to view Achebe’s oeuvre in its entirety, from Things Fall Apart and the early novels, through the revolutionary Ahiara Declaration – previously attributed to Emeka Ojukwu – to the revealing final works The Education of a British Educated Child and There Was a Country. Contesting previous interpretations which align Achebe too easily with this or that nationalist programme, the book reveals Achebe as a much more troubled figure than critics have habitually assumed.

Authoritative and wide-ranging, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of Achebe’s work in the twenty-first century.

Since the final demise of apartheid in 1994, South Africa has undergone dramatic changes in the political, social, and economic sphere. It is not surprising that these changes have also resulted in contentious reassessments of recent history. Many contemporary South African writers have taken up the challenge and created works offering new ways of critically re-imagining the country's violent past. While André P. Brink's "Imaginings of Sand" and Zakes "Mda's Ways of Dying" constitute renegotiations of the past during the period of transition, J. M. Coetzee's "Disgrace" and Phaswane Mpe's "Welcome to our Hillbrow" represent deliberations of a past that has been hampered in its change by a flawed transition. Just as history can never be taken at face value and never constitutes a finite, all-inclusive narration of the past, the 'historical accounts' provided in these texts often present a one-sided picture of history when considered only on their representational level. On the metafictional level, however, these texts often put such 'misreadings' into perspective and, in doing so, open up an otherwise monochrome reflection of South Africa's rainbow.

Annie Gagiano addresses more than twenty texts from various African regions and periods, ranging from transcriptions of ancient folktales to classic African English texts and recent writings on social and gender issues. Gagiano focuses on these texts' engagement with the forces that damage and threaten life in Africa and these authors' political courage, social concern, and subtle delineation of their characters' experiences. A new preface and several new essays bring the collection up to date with the latest developments in the field.

Reading the life narratives and literary texts of South Asians writing in and about East Africa, Gaurav Desai builds a surprising, alternative history of Africa's experience with slavery, migration, colonialism, nationalism, and globalization. Consulting Afrasian texts that are literary and nonfictional, political and private, he broadens the scope of African and South Asian scholarship and inspires a more nuanced understanding of the Indian Ocean's fertile routes of exchange.

Desai shows how the Indian Ocean engendered a number of syncretic identities and shaped the medieval trade routes of the Islamicate empire, the early independence movements galvanized in part by Gandhi's southern African experiences, the invention of new ethnic nationalisms, and the rise of plural, multiethnic African nations. Calling attention to lives and literatures long neglected by traditional scholars, Desai introduces rich, interdisciplinary ways of thinking not only about this specific region but also about the very nature of ethnic history and identity. Traveling from the twelfth century to today, he concludes with a look at contemporary Asian populations in East Africa and their struggle to decide how best to participate in the development and modernization of their postcolonial nations without sacrificing their political autonomy.

Nadia Anwar analyzes select post-independence Nigerian dramas through the conceptual framework of metatheater, a strategy that breaks dramatic illusion to foreground the process of play making. Anwar argues that distancing, as a function of metatheater, fosters a balanced theatrical environment by allowing the emotive and cognitive aspects of reception to dominate the theatergoing experience. She draws on Bertolt Brecht, Thomas J. Scheff, and other theoreticians to critique plays by Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, Femi Osofisan, Esiaba Irobi, and Stella 'Dia Oyedepo.

During the 1920s and 1930s, American minority artists and writers collaborated extensively with the Soviet avant-garde, seeking to build a revolutionary society that would end racial discrimination and advance progressive art. Making what Claude McKay called "the magic pilgrimage" to the Soviet Union, these intellectuals placed themselves at the forefront of modernism, using radical cultural and political experiments to reimagine identity and decenter the West.

Shining rare light on these efforts, The Ethnic Avant-Garde makes a unique contribution to interwar literary, political, and art history, drawing extensively on Russian archives, travel narratives, and artistic exchanges to establish the parameters of an undervalued "ethnic avant-garde." These writers and artists cohered around distinct forms that mirrored Soviet techniques of montage, fragment, and interruption. They orbited interwar Moscow, where the international avant-garde converged with the Communist International.

The book explores Vladimir Mayakovsky's 1925 visit to New York City via Cuba and Mexico, during which he wrote Russian-language poetry in an "Afro-Cuban" voice; Langston Hughes's translations of these poems while in Moscow, which he visited to assist on a Soviet film about African American life; a futurist play condemning Western imperialism in China, which became Broadway's first major production to feature a predominantly Asian American cast; and efforts to imagine the Bolshevik Revolution as Jewish messianic arrest, followed by the slow political disenchantment of the New York Intellectuals. Through an absorbing collage of cross-ethnic encounters that also include Herbert Biberman, Sergei Eisenstein, Paul Robeson, and Vladimir Tatlin, this work remaps global modernism along minority and Soviet-centered lines, further advancing the avant-garde project of seeing the world anew.

Winner, 2021 African Literature Association First Book Award

Should a writer work in a former colonial language or in a vernacular? The language question was one of the great, intractable problems that haunted postcolonial literatures in the twentieth century, but it has since acquired a reputation as a dead end for narrow nationalism. This book returns to the language question from a fresh perspective. Instead of asking whether language matters, The Tongue-Tied Imagination explores how the language question itself came to matter.

Focusing on the case of Senegal, Warner investigates the intersection of French and Wolof. Drawing on extensive archival research and an under-studied corpus of novels, poetry, and films in both languages, as well as educational projects and popular periodicals, the book traces the emergence of a politics of language from colonization through independence to the era of neoliberal development. Warner reads the francophone works of well-known authors such as Léopold Senghor, Ousmane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Boubacar Boris Diop alongside the more overlooked Wolof-language works with which they are in dialogue.

Refusing to see the turn to vernacular languages only as a form of nativism, The Tongue-Tied Imagination argues that the language question opens up a fundamental struggle over the nature and limits of literature itself. Warner reveals how language debates tend to pull in two directions: first, they weave vernacular traditions into the normative patterns of world literature; but second, they create space to imagine how literary culture might be configured otherwise. Drawing on these insights, Warner brilliantly rethinks the terms of world literature and charts a renewed practice of literary comparison.

Toni Morrison: An Ethical Poetics situates Toni Morrison as a writer who writes about writing as much as about racialized, engendered, and sexualized African American, and therefore American, experience. In foregrounding the ethics of fiction writing, the book resists any triumphalist reading of Morrison’s achievement in order to allow the meditative, unsettled, and unsettling questions that arise throughout her long labor at the nexus of language and politics, where her fiction interrogates representation itself.

Moving between close reading and critical theory, Toni Morrison: An Ethical Poetics reveals the ways in which Morrison’s primary engagement with language has been a search for how and what language is made to communicate, and for how and what speaks in and from generation to generation. There is no easy escape from such legacy, no escape into a pure language free of the burdens of racialized agendas. Rather, there is the example of Morrison’s commitment to writerly, which is to say readerly, wakefulness.

At a time when sustained study devoted to single authors has become rare, this book will be an invaluable resource for readers, scholars, and teachers of Morrison’s work.

Black Orpheus and Transition stand as towering landmarks in Africa’s cultural and intellectual history between 1957 and 1978, serving as incubators for the continent's postcolonial literary and artistic awakening. Founded in 1957 by Ulli Beier in Nigeria, Black Orpheus was a platform for artistic experimentation and dialogue, initially inspired by the Paris-based Présence Africaine but quickly evolving into its own distinctive voice. Beier’s initiatives, such as the Mbari Clubs in Ibadan and Oshogbo, complemented the magazine’s mission, offering creative spaces that nurtured some of Africa’s most notable artists and writers. By 1961, Transition, founded in Uganda by Rajat Neogy, emerged as a dynamic forum for cultural redefinition and incisive political commentary. Both publications became indispensable for grappling with the intellectual and cultural challenges of decolonization, exploring themes ranging from African aesthetics to the politics of independence.

Despite their profound influence, neither magazine enjoyed smooth trajectories. Black Orpheus weathered internal upheavals, with a second editorial generation—led by Abiola Irele and J.P. Clark—taking the reins and redefining its vision. Meanwhile, Transition faced outright suppression when Neogy was imprisoned for sedition in Uganda. Relocating to Ghana under the stewardship of Wole Soyinka, the magazine continued to thrive, but both journals struggled to adapt to Africa’s rapidly evolving post-independence realities. Their pages reflected a rich tapestry of debates: pan-Africanism versus tribalism, artistic primitivism versus modernism, and indigenous languages versus Western literary conventions. Ultimately, these magazines were more than periodicals—they were crucibles of creativity and intellectual exchange that catalyzed a generation of thinkers and writers. While their eventual closures were due to economic and logistical challenges, their legacy as formative platforms for Africa’s modern cultural identity remains unparalleled.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s follow-up to her popular yet controversial book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin that features critical information supporting the brutally honest portrayal of institutional slavery. Due to an overwhelming response, it was published one year after the original novel. A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a detailed explanation of the practices and imagery portrayed in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The previous novel was harshly criticized by Southerners who felt Stowe’s descriptions were unfounded. In an effort to defend her work and beliefs, the author delivered a thorough account of her research. Certain editions were published with the full title A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon Which the Story Is Founded, Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a staunch and proactive abolitionist. She used her voice to highlight social and moral injustice despite public scrutiny. A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, reenforced her commitment to the truth and the pursuit of freedom. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin is both modern and readable.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

En Ramón López Velarde: La lumbre inmóvil —selección y epílogo de Marco Antonio Campos—, José Emilio Pacheco realiza una lectura de la obra del autor de La suave Patria, una disección única de su quehacer poético.

Con apenas treinta y tres años, Ramón López Velarde (1888–1921) murió de neumonía luego de una caminata nocturna por las calles de la Ciudad de México. Con él se cierra una etapa de la poesía mexicana que encuentra su esplendor en los cruentos años revolucionarios. No es posible saber si en el futuro se le seguirá leyendo. Eso lo dirá la posteridad, que se construye con lecturas y relecturas, y con libros como Ramón López Velarde: La lumbre inmóvil, en el que dos poetas conversan. ¿De qué hablan? De poesía, por supuesto. Desde la eternidad literaria nos dicen: «Aquí estuvimos, / reemplazando a los muertos, / y seguiremos / en la carne y la sangre / de los que lleguen».

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

In Ramón López Velarde: La lumbre inmóvil —selected and with an epilogue by Marco Antonio Campos—, José Emilio Pacheco offers an interpretation of the work of the author of La suave Patria, a unique dissection of his poetic craft.

At just thirty-three years old, Ramón López Velarde (1888–1921) died of pneumonia after a nighttime walk through the streets of Mexico City. With him, a chapter of Mexican poetry comes to a close, one that found its splendor during the bloody revolutionary years. It is impossible to know whether he will continue to be read in the future. That will be determined by posterity, which is built through readings and re-readings, and through books like Ramón López Velarde: The Motionless Flame, in which two poets converse. What do they talk about? Poetry, of course. From literary eternity, they tell us: “Here we were, / replacing the dead, / and we will remain / in the flesh and blood / of those who come.”

It is commonly believed that Stalinism ended a vibrant period in Soviet avant-garde art and literature. The triumph of socialist realism, in this view, curtailed experimentation with aesthetic form and replaced it with a call for clarity, accessibility, and ideological conformity. But Stalin’s formula “national in form, socialist in content” gave artists an opening for officially sanctioned formal innovation—as long as it drew on the national cultures of the Soviet Union.

Nariman Skakov offers a new way to understand Soviet modernism, showing how writers and artists looked to the East to renew avant-garde experimentalism under Stalin. He traces how figures such as Victor Shklovsky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, Dziga Vertov, and Sergei Eisenstein responded to the Soviet state’s ideological demands by engaging with the traditions of the new socialist republics in Central Asia. The concept of national form gave these artists a sanctuary for aesthetic innovation, yet this experimentation relied on exoticization of the “strangeness” of the Soviet East and a fascination with ethnic others.

Recasting Soviet aesthetics from the vantage point of Central Asia, Skakov rethinks orientalism and its relationship to socialism. Challenging conventional narratives of the fate of the Soviet avant-garde, Reorientalism provides a deeply original decentering of modernism.