Fictions of African dictatorship : postcolonial power across genres / edited by Charlotte Baker and Hannah Grayson

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Baker, Charlotte, 1976- editor.

Grayson, Hannah, editor.

Series:

Race and resistance across borders in the long twentieth century.

Race and resistance across borders in the long twentieth century

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African literature--20th century--History and criticism.

African literature.

Dictators in literature.

Dictators--Africa.

Dictators.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (262 pages) : illustrations; digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Peter Lang, [2018]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Fictions of African Dictatorship examines the fictional representation of the African dictator and the performance of dictatorship across genres. The volume includes contributions focusing on literature, theatre and film, all of which examine the relationship between the fictional and the political. Among the questions the contributors ask: what are the implications of reading a novel for its historical content or accuracy? How does the dictator novel interrogate ideas of veracity? How is power performed and ridiculed? How do different writers reflect on questions of authority in the postcolony, and what are the effects on their stories and modes of narration? This volume untangles some of the intricate workings of dictatorial power in the postcolony, through twelve close readings of works of fiction.

Contents:

Introduction / Charlotte Baker and Hannah Grayson

Portrait of a dictator

The image of Sékou Touré: art and the making of postcolonial Guinea / Angie Epifano

From dictatorship to self-constitution: historical fiction and the aesthetics of tyranny in Bensalem Himmich's Le calife de l'épouvante / Khalid Lyamlahy

"Where is our president?" Bekolo's 'Dictator' / Rita Keresztesi

Myth-making/unreality/performance

Creation through inversion: the carnivalesque postcolonial state in the novels of Alain Mabanckou and in Koli Jean Bofane / Eline Kuenen

From ritual to fiction: The wizard of the crow / Maria Muresan

Mythical representations of dictatorial power in the novels of Ahmadou Kourouma / Lucien Bindi Ngouté

Compromised freedoms

The author and the authoritarian: Gamal al-Ghitani's Al-Zayni Barakat / Alya El Hosseiny

The one who does His Majesty's bidding: censorship and the banality of power in siSwati crime fiction and drama / Kerry Vincent

"My characters, my plots, are under my pen": authority as dictatorship in King-Aribisala's The hangman's game / Madeleine Wilson

Forms of resistance

Figuring the dictator in the Horn of Africa: Nuruddin Farah's dictatorship trilogy and Ahmed Omar Askar's short stories / Fiona Moolla

"Under the lion's gaze": representing female sexuality and power in authoritarian contexts / Asante Lucy Mtenje

Mighty mouth, minor literature? Siad Barre's dictatorship in Italian postcolonial literature / Teresa Solis and Lorenzo Mari.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

CC BY

ISBN:

9781787076822

1787076822

Publisher Number:

10.3726/b11381