A Companion to African Literatures

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EDITED BY

OLAKUNLE GEORGE

This edition first published 2021 © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data

Name: George, Olakunle, editor.

Title: A companion to African literatures / edited by Olakunle George.

Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley‐Blackwell, [2021] | Series: Blackwell companions to literature and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020024003 (print) | LCCN 2020024004 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119058175 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119058229 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119058212 (epub)

Subjects: CYAC: African literature–History and criticism.

Classification: LCC PL8010 .C57 2020 (print) | LCC PL8010 (ebook) | DDC 809/.896–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024003LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024004

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: © shuoshu/Getty Images

Adélékè Adékis Humanities Distinguished Professor, English Department, at The Ohio State University. His primary research interests are Anglophone African literatures, pre‐1965 African American literature, and Yorubaphone culture and literature. His Arts of Being Yoruba: Divination, Allegory, Tragedy, Proverb, Panegyric (2017/2019) won the Best Book of the Year: Scholarship award of the African Literature Association. For Fagunwa Study Group, he co‐edited (with Akin Adéṣ kàn) Celebrating D. O. Fagunwa: Aspects of African and World Literary History (2017), a selection for Top 20 Book of the Year List in Nigeria. His edition of the Rev. Philip Quaque’s missionary letters, Letters to London: 1765–1811 , was published in 2017. Adé k is also the author of Proverbs, Textuality, and Nativism in African Literature (1998) and The Slave’s Rebellion: Literature, History, Orature (2005). Adé k ’s main research focus at the present time is on the completion of a book on speech acts in poetry.

Fazia Aïtelis currently Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Claremont McKenna College. Her research interests are African and especially North African literature, culture, and cinema as well as Amazigh studies, women’s writing, and immigration. Her publications include a co‐edited volume (with Valérie Orlando) on Algerian writer Nabile Farès, L’Exilé, l’étranger et l’autre dans les œuvres de Nabile Farès (2018). In 2014, she published We Are Imazighen: The Development of Algerian Berber Identity in Twentieth‐Century Literature and Culture 1930 to 2000 . Aïtell also published articles on Algerian film (“Des images pour le dire: périple au cœur du silence algérien dans Le Repenti de Merzak Allouache”) and literature (“Kabylgeria or How to Write Algeria”). She is currently working on a book project on Amazigh women and the Algerian war.

Ahmed Idrissi Alamiis Associate Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University. In his research, he explores questions of cultural identity, migrancy, and constructions of Arab/Muslim subjectivities through North African, Middle Eastern, and Arab diasporic cultural production. He also examines issues of Islam, modernity, and reform within a global cultural context. In addition to his book Mutual Othering: Islam, Modernity, and the Politics of Cross‐Cultural Encounters in Pre‐Colonial Moroccan and European Travel Writing (2013), his articles have appeared in a variety of journals, including Journal of North African Studies , Journal of Contemporary Thought , Middle Eastern Literatures , South Central Review , and William & Mary Quarterly . Professor Idrissi Alami is currently working on research projects that explore the Maghreb through transatlantic discourse and culture, Arab and Muslim diasporic narratives, and nation and nationalism in Arabic literature and culture.