The extroverted African novel and literary publishing in the twenty-first century

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2173158
AutoresNathan Suhr-Sytsma (0000-0003-4696-107X, Emory University, autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume30
Fascículo3
Páginasi-i
Data de publicação2018-09-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of African Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1369-6815 • E-ISSN: 1469-9346
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13696815.2017.1411009
OpenAlexW4252558335
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas16
Referências citadas29

This essay revisits Eileen Julien's seminal essay, 'The Extroverted African Novel' (2006), by way of twenty-first-century fiction by Nigerian writers. Since 2006, new Nigerian publishers have been publishing ambitious literary fiction that is arguably neither 'extroverted' nor 'introverted' but 'multifocal'. The essay sketches the trajectory of literary publishing in Nigeria in light of questions about the forms of local immediacy afforded by different genres and media. It considers how the multifocal fictions of Sefi Atta, Teju Cole, Emmanuel Iduma and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, among others, figure literary publishing in Nigeria. Their novels suggest that these writers' real investment in various readerships on the continent, as well as beyond it, goes hand in hand with their experience of literary singularity in the medium of print. In sum, locally published fiction can court multiple kinds of publics, and it may be more accurate to conceive of 'extroversion' as dependent on a text's reception than as fixed in its form

Art · Epistemology · Immediacy · Literary criticism · Literature · Poetry · Publishing · Sociology · Trope (literature · Comparative and World Literature · History · Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Philosophy