Review: Gerald Gaylard. After Colonialism: African Postmodernism and Magical Realism

Abstract

Gerald Gaylard begins his timely and wide-ranging book by setting out
his methodology. Viewing African postcolonialism as comprising a poetics of defamiliarisation and a politics of dissidence, disillusionment and imaginative speculation, he argues that the most appropriate methodology for examining its works of fiction is a neo-formalist comparative induction. Instead of providing close readings of specific texts he compares
pertinent features of works by authors such as Zakes Mda, Ashraf Jamal, Ivan Vladislavić, JM Coetzee, Anne Landsman, Bessie Head, Dambudzo Marechera, Mia Couto, MG Vassanji, Moses Isegawa, Kojo Laing, Sony Labou Tansi, Syl Cheney-Coker, Ben Okri, Naguib Mahfouz, Assia Djebar, Jamal Mahjoub, Tayeb Salih and Biyi Bandele.

Current Writing Vol. 19 (1) 2007: pp. 165-168