A Feminist Misreading of Two Magic Realist Novels

Zusatztext

This book interrogates the representation of national failure in Africa in Ben Okri's The Famished Road and Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow.It invites readers to read these narratives of national failure with a new critical insight in order to unmask the gender nuisances that may otherwise go unnoticed. It therefore challenges the reader to leave the comfort zone of traditional reading to a "misreading". The book argues that the satirisation of national failure that the two narratives employ using magic realism are very much gendered. While magic realism is a powerful tool in the hands of the authors in representing the selfish ogres of the postcolonial state in Africa, it lands the trap of making the ogres female.

Autorenportrait

Ronald Sichali is a lecturer in African Literature at the University of Livingstonia, Malawi. He holds a Master of Arts in English from the University of Botswana. He has taught literature at both Secondary school and University for over ten years. His research interests are in postcolonial literature, feminist theory and magic realism.

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