Amina (review)

Abstract

unpropitious surroundings. Neither country comes under focus in this book (South Africa is mentioned on one page only). The book under review is not a straightforward survey of the trials and tribulations of recent democratization attempts in Africa. Instead, it is a rather odd hybrid, structured in three separate sections. The first section is entitled ‘Intellectuals, writers and soldiers’ and features three chapters that collectively look at how three of Africa’s literary giants – Soyinka, Ngugi and Achebe – have viewed the problematic of Africa’s political vicissitudes. In addition, the section also includes a chapter on how Africa’s (many) military rulers have sought to justify their regimes through literary defences. The second section is entitled ‘Students, youths and people’. It has three fieldwork-based chapters covering what might be called bottom-up political opposition in three countries: Cameroon, Nigeria, and Malawi. Seemingly tacked on to the end is a rather unrelated chapter about ‘identity and knowledge production in the fourth generation’ that does not really fit well with the preceding three chapters. There is no concluding chapter to tie things together. Overall, it is not clear to whom this book is supposed to appeal. It is too variable and poorly focused for the political scientists, while I suspect that those interested in the use of literature as a political weapon will not find much here with which they were not already familiar.