Complicity and Responsibility in Contemporary African Writing | 1:a upplagan

This book investigates the many ways in which contemporary African fiction has reflected on themes of responsibility and complicity in representations of the postcolonial period. Covering a range of authors including Ayi Kwei Armah, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nuruddin Farah, Michiel Heyns, and J. M. Coetzee, the book contextualises each writer’s novels in their cultural and literary context in order to investigate similarities and differences between fictional approaches to individual complicity in politically unstable nations. In doing so, the book also serves to challenge longstanding western amnesia concerning responsibility for historical and present-day violence inflicted on many African countries and juxtaposes this denial of responsibility with the western literary readership’s consumption of narratives of African "suffering." The study instead suggests a way forward towards new reading habits based on an awareness of readerly complicity and responsibility. Drawing insights from across political philosophy and literary theory, this book will be of interest to researchers of African literature, postcolonial studies, and peace and conflict studies.