In Borderline Movements in African Fiction, Losambe uses African fiction to test the validity and relevance of critical assumptions made by postcolonial African metatheorists--nativists, assimilationists and syncretists-- as they try to define African subjectivity and derive an immanent African epistemological order from it.

Through a detailed analysis of the works of African novelists such as Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Mongo Beti, Camara Laye, V.Y. Mudimbe, Mbulelo Mzamane, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and NJabulo Ndebele, Losambe asserts that, like the syncretists, these writers locate African subjectivity in the borderline space between Africa’s precolonial tradition and Western values, Africa’s orality and Western literacy.

“A product of many years of research and scholarship, this book crosses many borders and traverses many cultures. Its landscapes are wide, its analyses frequently deep and engaging. A literate and worthy contribution to the theory and criticism of African literature.”

-Niyi Osundare
poet and literary critic, University of New Orleans

“In Borderline Movements in African Fiction, Lokangaka Losambe opens new critical frontiers that expose to the reader the complex totality of African narrative discourses. The book is definitely a welcome challenge to critics, readers and writers of African literature. It is profound, anchored on theoretical insight and exhibits an amazing knowledge of the African societies the writers confront in their works.”

-Tanure Ojaide
poet, novelist and literary critic, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LOKANGAKA LOSAMBE is a professor of English at the University of Vermont. He edited An Introduction to the African Prose Narrative (AWP), co-edited Pre-colonial and Post-colonial Drama and Theatre in Africa( AWP), and published numerous essays on African literature and its criticism.

CATEGORY
Literary Criticism/AFRICA