African literature, the body of traditional oral and written literatures in Afro-Asiatic and African languages together with

works written by Africans in European languages. Traditional written literature, which is limited to a smaller geographic
area than is oral literature, is most characteristic of those sub-Saharan cultures that have participated in the cultures of
the Mediterranean. In particular, there are written literatures in both Hausa and Arabic, created by the scholars of what
is now northern Nigeria, and the Somali people have produced a traditional written literature. There are also works
written in Geʿez (Ethiopic) and Amharic, two of the languages of Ethiopia, which is the one part of Africa where
Christianity has been practiced long enough to be considered traditional. Works written in European languages date
primarily from the 20th century onward. The literature of South Africa in English and Afrikaans is also covered in a
separate article, South African literature. 

African literature, literary works of the African continent. African literature consists of a body of work in different
languages and various genres, ranging from oral literature to literature written in colonial languages (French,
Portuguese, and English).
See also African languages ; South African literature .
Oral literature, including stories, dramas, riddles, histories, myths, songs, proverbs, and other expressions, is frequently
employed to educate and entertain children. Oral histories, myths, and proverbs additionally serve to remind whole
communities of their ancestors' heroic deeds, their past, and the precedents for their customs and traditions. Essential
to oral literature is a concern for presentation and oratory. Folktale tellers use call-response techniques. A griot (praise
singer) will accompany a narrative with music.
Some of the first African writings to gain attention in the West were the poignant slave narratives, such as The
Interesting Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African  (1789), which
described vividly the horrors of slavery and the slave trade. As Africans became literate in their own languages, they
often reacted against colonial repression in their writings. Others looked to their own past for subjects. Thomas Mofolo,
for example, wrote Chaka  (tr. 1931), about the famous Zulu military leader, in Susuto.
Since the early 19th cent. writers from western Africa have used newspapers to air their views. Several founded
newspapers that served as vehicles for expressing nascent nationalist feelings. French-speaking Africans in France, led by
Léopold Senghor , were active in the négritude movement from the 1930s, along with Léon Damas and AiméCésaire ,
French speakers from French Guiana and Martinique. Their poetry not only denounced colonialism, it proudly asserted
the validity of the cultures that the colonials had tried to crush.
After World War II, as Africans began demanding their independence, more African writers were published. Such writers
as, in western Africa, Wole Soyinka , Chinua Achebe , Ousmane Sembene , Kofi Awooner, Agostinho Neto , Tchicaya u
tam'si, Camera Laye, Mongo Beti, Ben Okri, and Ferdinand Oyono and, in eastern Africa, Ngugi wa Thiong'o ,
Okotp'Bitek , and Jacques Rabémananjara produced poetry, short stories, novels, essays, and plays. All were writing in
European languages, and often they shared the same themes: the clash between indigenous and colonial cultures,
condemnation of European subjugation, pride in the African past, and hope for the continent's independent future.
In South Africa, the horrors of apartheid have, until the present, dominated the literature. Es'kia Mphahlele ,
NadineGordimer , Bessie Head , Dennis Brutus , J. M. Coetzee, and Miriam Tlali all reflect in varying degrees in their
writings the experience of living in a racially segregated society.
Much of contemporary African literature reveals disillusionment and dissent with current events. For example, V. Y.
Mudimbe in Before the Birth of the Moon  (1989) explores a doomed love affair played out within a society riddled by
deceit and corruption. The Zimbabwean novelist and poet Chenjerai Hove (1956–2015), wrote vividly in English and his
native Shona of the hardships experienced during the struggle against British colonial rule, and later of the hopes and
disappointments of life under the rule of Robert Mugabe . In Kenya Ngugi wa Thiong'o was jailed shortly after he
produced a play, in Kikuyu, which was perceived as highly critical of the country's government. Apparently, what seemed
most offensive about the drama was the use of songs to emphasize its messages.
The weaving of music into the Kenyan's play points out another characteristic of African literature. Many writers
incorporate other arts into their work and often weave oral conventions into their writing. p'Bitek structured Song of
Iowino  (1966) as an Acholi poem; Achebe's characters pepper their speech with proverbs in Things Fall Apart  (1958).
Others, such as Senegalese novelist Ousmane Sembene, have moved into films to take their message to people who
cannot read.

African short fiction comes in various forms: derivations of traditional tales, such as Jomo Kenyatta’s “The Gentlemen of
the Jungle” and Martha Mvungi’s “Mwipenza the Killer”; narratives that are too compact to be novels, such as Alex La
Guma’s “A Walk in the Night”; and short narratives or stories ranging from a few pages to approximately ten pages. This
body of writing can be appropriately considered a literature of neglect or a literature in search of critics. Unlike African
long fiction, which has established a robust dialogue between writers and critics, African short fiction has received little
critical attention. F. Odun Balogun’s Tradition and Modernity in the African Short Story: An Introduction to a Literature in
Search of Critics, published by Greenwood Press in 1991, is one of the only book- length studies on the subject. This
anomaly cannot be attributed to a lack of production of short stories by Africans. While more of such stories could be
published, African writers, both established ones and beginners, continue to express their conception of Africa through
the short-story form. The neglect suffered by this genre can be partially attributed to its length, its brevity, which can
easily lead to the misconception of a short story as an underdeveloped work in embryonic form, a stunted novel that has
failed to reach fruition. Furthermore, most writers of short fiction have also turned their hands to writing longer fiction,
thus making short-story writing appear as an apprenticeship, preparing one for a writing career in longer genres.
Nonetheless, short fiction defies narrow definition. It can claim the stature of other literary genres because it is
endowed with the capacity, no matter how condensed, to illuminate the human condition by evoking a mood, state of
mind, or condition, which can linger even after the narration itself has ended. It can bring about moments of epiphany,
can depict one event or several closely related events, and has the capacity for great lyricism because, as a form, it
compels scrupulous terseness. The compactness of the short-story form, its ability to promote greater artistic coherence
than is possible with longer compositions, such as the novel, has made it a preferred vehicle for articulating many a
human experience. In Africa, as in the West, most creative writers who have gained prominence working with other
literary forms have also tried their hands at the short story with impressive results. These writers seem to have
discovered in shorter fiction a form that best enables them to express what it means to be an African and a human
being.

The African short story is extensive in the themes it covers, reflecting the problems of adjusting to life on a continent
where the pace of change has been dizzying. Prominent among the themes of the African short story are critiques of
colonialism, missionary activity, and religion (indigenous and foreign); the politics of independent Africa; the new ruling
class; political and social corruption; apartheid and racial strife; economic and financial strife; indigenous culture, values,
and village life; urban life and the lure of the city; the strain of growing up; old age, disease, and death; the sexual
exploitation of women and prostitution; motherhood, childbearing, child rearing, and childlessness; the ravages of
nature; and a search for a philosophy of life. There is also a considerable adaptation of traditional tales, which speaks to
the blending of African oral narrative traditions with Western literary forms.

African writers have been recognized for doing exciting things with short fiction in their exploration and appraisal of
indigenous African norms and values as well as the intricacies of life in contemporary Africa. In this quest, prominent
African writers, such as Chinua Achebe, Ousmane Sembène, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Grace Ogot, Flora Nwapa, Ama Ata
Aidoo, and Bessie Head, who have all gained prominence in working with other genres, such as the novel, drama, and
poetry, have all also authored short-story collections. Furthermore, African women writers have been quite prolific
producers of short stories, with Nwapa and Aidoo each having two short-story collections to her credit. In fact, the
stories of Aidoo, Head, and Ogot are quite widely anthologized.

While African short fiction dates back to the tail end of the nineteenth century, with the appearance of Cape Verdean
Henrique de Vasconsellos’s A Mentira Vital in 1896, most of the early works are out of print and extremely difficult to
find. The proliferation of this art form, however, seems to have begun in the 1940’s. Achebe notes in the introduction
to African Short Stories (1985) that the short-story form has enjoyed the attention and patronage of African writers since
Peter Abrahams’s 1942 collection, Dark Testament. The short story continues to thrive among African writers, whether it
is published in popular presses, journals and exclusive magazines, short-story collections, or anthologies of literature. A
steady stream of single short stories in journals, literary magazines and newspapers, individual author collections, and
multiple-author anthologies has continued to be published. Many aspiring African writers made their short-story debuts
in campus magazines, such as Penpoint, Sokoti, The Horizon, and Idoto.

Charles Larson’s Under African Skies: Modern African Stories (1997), translated from the French by Ellen Conroy
Kennedy, is a multiple-author anthology. Most of the twenty-six stories in this collection, however, have been previously
published in other anthologies. For instance, Achebe’s “Girls at War,” Bessie Head’s “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses,”
and Camara Laye’s “The Eyes of the Statue” had appeared in More Modern African Stories, an earlier anthology, edited
in 1975 by Larson. Under African Skies brings together stories from Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone Africa
even though, as in most of the anthologies, selections from Anglophone writers dominate. Heinemann Educational
Books, through its African Writers’ Series, has one of the largest collections of both single-author collections and
multiple- author anthologies of African short stories. The most popular multiple-author anthologies among these
are Unwinding Threads: Writing by Women in Africa (1983), selected and edited by Charlotte H. Bruner, which comprises
short stories and excerpts from longer fiction by African women writers, and African Short Stories (1985) and The
Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories (1992), both edited by Achebe and C. L. Innes. The stories in
these anthologies are selected from all over the continent and are organized by region. Heinemann also has regional
anthologies such as Africa South: Contemporary Writings (1981), edited by Mothobi Mutloatse, and Stories from Central
and Southern Africa (1983), edited by Paul A. Scanlon, which contains stories from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana,
Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, Namibia, and South Africa.

Publishers other than Heinemann have also published anthologies of African short stories. A few are Modern African
Stories (1966), edited by Ellis Ayitey Komey and Ezekiel Mphahlele and published by Faber and Faber; Pan African Short
Stories (1965), edited by Neville Denny and published by Thomas Nelson and Sons; and The Penguin Book of Southern
African Stories (1985), edited by Stephen Gray. There is also a considerable number of single-author collections of short
stories. Prominent among these are Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night (1962), Grace Ogot’s Land Without
Thunder (1968), Luís Bernardo Honwana’s We Killed Mangy-Dog and Other Mozambique Stories (translated by Dorothy
Guedes; 1969), Aidoo’s No Sweetness Here (1970), Nwapa’s This Is Lagos: And Other Stories (1971), Achebe’s Girls at
War (1972), Sembène’s Voltaïque(1962; Tribal Scars, 1974), Ngugi’s Secret Lives (1974), and Bessie Head’s The Collector
of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales(1977).