Nigeria's Young Authors Are Not Always 'Heirs' to Their Literary Forebears

analysis

By Tiziana Morosetti, University of OxfordChigozie Obioma's Man Booker Prize nomination for The Fishermen follows by more than ten years that of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus in 2004. No other Nigerian writer has made it to the prize in between. The similarities between Obioma and Adichie are striking.


Both writers were in their 20s when nominated for the prize. Both are currently living in the US where they emerged from creative writing programmes. Both debut novels are coming-of-age stories and both authors, for their style and ethnic background, have been variously described as "heirs" to Chinua Achebe.
The connection to this African literary giant, and to his masterpiece, Things Fall Apart, is explicitly established by Adichie in the opening line of Purple Hibiscus:
Things started to fall apart at home when ...
It is Obioma's ability to combine the novel form with the storytelling tradition that has been deemed Achebean.
As strongly as this comparison may stand, framing younger writers' work within the footsteps of giants is always fraught with predictable risk. This is the risk of shadowing the merits (and faults) of the former in an attempt to assess the legacy of the latter.
More relevantly to Nigerian writers today, the risk is also that of nurturing replication rather than innovation in a world market that, when it comes to Africa, is keen to have readers reassured in their notions.
'Africanness'
One such notion is the essential "Africanness" of texts from or about Africa. It is an intangible but sellable quality that has already been subject to scrutiny when it comes to specific prizes such as the Caine Prize for African Writing. The prize has been criticised even by writers for indirectly encouraging authors to conform to external expectations of what a "good" African story should be about.
It has also significantly been accompanied by debates such as that surrounding yet another emerging writer, Tope Folarin, winner of the 2013 edition of the Caine Prize. He is said by some to lack the necessary connections to Africa - he has spent most of his life in the US - to classify as properly "African".
This sort of polemic, as sterile as it may be, does remind us of the subtle dynamics behind the success of a good story, and of novels in particular. The deep institutionalisation of writing through programmes and prizes - a main gap between Africa's literary greats and the younger generations - partially implies a crystallisation of writing from or about Africa.
Within this context, while Achebe above all fought against a stereotyped narrative of Africa in literature, the work of younger authors risks establishing a new tradition of writing about the continent that may also lead to stereotype.
Achebe is not the only author whose influence on the younger generations is tangible. Obioma has repeatedly indicated Amos Tutuola, author of the first African novel in English published outside of Africa, as his main reference point.
Adichie's second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, heavily owes in plot and spirit to Chukwemeka Ike's Sunset at Dawn. Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation (2005) may be considered a revisitation of Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy, whose exceptional language Iweala sets on to recreate.