Fictions of African dictatorship : cultural representations of postcolonial power / edited by Charlotte Baker and Hannah Grayson.

• Introduction / Charlotte Baker and Hannah Grayson -- Portrait of a dictator -- The image of Sékou Touré: art and the making of postcolonial Guinea / Angie Epifano -- From dictatorship to self-constitution: historical fiction and the aesthetics of tyranny in Bensalem Himmich's Le calife de l'épouvante / Khalid Lyamlahy -- "Where is our president?" Bekolo's 'Dictator' / Rita Keresztesi -- Myth-making/unreality/performance -- Creation through inversion: the carnivalesque postcolonial state in the novels of Alain Mabanckou and in Koli Jean Bofane / Eline Kuenen -- From ritual to fiction: The wizard of the crow / Maria Muresan -- Mythical representations of dictatorial power in the novels of Ahmadou Kourouma / Lucien Bindi Ngouté -- Compromised freedoms -- The author and the authoritarian: Gamal al-Ghitani's Al-Zayni Barakat / Alya El Hosseiny -- The one who does His Majesty's bidding: censorship and the banality of power in siSwati crime fiction and drama / Kerry Vincent -- "My characters, my plots, are under my pen": authority as dictatorship in King-Aribisala's The hangman's game / Madeleine Wilson -- Forms of resistance -- Figuring the dictator in the Horn of Africa: Nuruddin Farah's dictatorship trilogy and Ahmed Omar Askar's short stories / Fiona Moolla -- "Under the lion's gaze": representing female sexuality and power in authoritarian contexts / Asante Lucy Mtenje -- Mighty mouth, minor literature? Siad Barre's dictatorship in Italian postcolonial literature / Teresa Solis and Lorenzo Mari.

• Fictions of African Dictatorship examines the fictional representation of the African dictator and the performance of dictatorship across genres. The volume includes contributions focusing on literature, theatre and film, all of which examine the relationship between the fictional and the political. Among the questions the contributors ask: what are the implications of reading a novel for its historical content or accuracy? How does the dictator novel interrogate ideas of veracity? How is power performed and ridiculed? How do different writers reflect on questions of authority in the postcolony, and what are the effects on their stories and modes of narration? This volume untangles some of the intricate workings of dictatorial power in the postcolony, through twelve close readings of works of fiction. It interrogates the intersections between real and literary space, exploring censorship, political critique and creative resistance. Insights into a wide range of lesser known texts and contexts make this volume an original and insightful contribution to scholarship on representations of dictatorship. 

Ämnesord

Dictators in literature.  (LCSH)

African literature  -- 20th century -- History and criticism. (LCSH)

Dictators  -- Africa. (LCSH)

African literature.  (fast)

Dictators.  (fast)

Dictators in literature.  (fast)

Africa.  (fast)

1900-1999  (fast)

Genre

Criticism, interpretation, etc.  (fast)

Klassifikation

PL8010 (LCC)

809.896 (DDC)