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Examples of pre-colonial African literature can be traced back to at least the fourth century AD. The best-known is the Kebra Negast , or "Book of Kings" from the 14th century AD. [ 1 ] Another well-known book is the Garima Gospels , one of the oldest known surviving bibles in the world, written in Ge'ez around 500 AD.
African poetry encompasses a wide variety of traditions arising from Africa's 55 countries and from evolving trends within different literary genres.The field is complex, primarily because of Africa's original linguistic and cultural diversity and partly because of the effects of slavery and colonisation, the believe in religion and social life which resulted in English, Portuguese and French ...
The first problem any student of South African literature is confronted with, is the diversity of the literary systems. Gerrit Olivier notes, "While it is not unusual to hear academics and politicians talk about a 'South African literature', the situation at ground level is characterised by diversity and even fragmentation".
African American literature has both been influenced by the great African diasporic heritage [7] and shaped it in many countries. It has been created within the larger realm of post-colonial literature, although scholars distinguish between the two, saying that "African American literature differs from most post-colonial literature in that it is written by members of a minority community who ...
The "new South African" democratic era was characterised by what literary critic Stephane Serge Ibinga in her article "Post-Apartheid Literature Beyond Race" [10] describes as "honeymoon literature" or "the literature of celebration", epitomised by Zakes Mda, who was active as a playwright and poet long before publishing his first novel in 1995.
Nigerian literature is a literary writing in Nigeria often by her citizens. It encompasses writers in a number of languages spoken in Nigeria including Igbo, Urhobo, Yoruba, Hausa and Nupe. [1] Things Fall Apart (1958) by Chinua Achebe is one of the milestones in African literature.
Kenya has a strong tradition of oral literature, which continues today in several languages. [1] As a result of Kenya's history, including a period where it was a former British colony, Kenyan literature concurrently belongs to several bodies of writing, including that of the Commonwealth of Nations and of Africa as a whole. [1]
Since the early 1990s, several novels have been published to mark the advent of the third generation of Nigerian writers. During this time, some Nigerian writers wrote breakaway literature writings, which were quite different from the norm; such writings include: The Famished Road (1991) by Ben Okri, The Icarus Girl (2005) by Helen Oyeyemi, GraceLand (2004) by Chris Abani and Masters of the ...