Dictators, Dictatorship and the African Novel, 1st ed. 2021
Fictions of the State under Neoliberalism
New Comparisons in World Literature Series

This book examines the representation of dictators and dictatorships in African fiction. It examines how the texts clarify the origins of postcolonial dictatorships and explore the shape of the democratic-egalitarian alternatives. The first chapter explains the ?neoliberal? period after the 1970s as an effective ?recolonization? of Africa by Western states and international financial institutions. Dictatorship is theorised as a form of concentrated economic and political power that facilitates Africa?s continued dependency in the context of world capitalism. The deepest aspiration of anti-colonial revolution remains the democratization of these authoritarian states inherited from the colonial period. This book discusses four novels by Ng?g? wa Thiong?o, Ahmadou Kourouma, Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in order to reveal how their themes and forms dramatize this unfinished struggle between dictatorship and radical democracy.  

Introduction: The Unfinished Project of Decolonisation  

1 Democracy and the State 

2 Neoliberalism and the Recolonization of Africa 

3 Performance and Power I: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow

4 Performance and Power II: Ahmadou Kourouma’s Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote (En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages) 

Conclusion: The Counter-Counter-Revolution

Robert Spencer is Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of Cosmopolitan Criticism and Postcolonial Literature (2011) and the co-author of For Humanism: Explorations in Theory and Politics, with David Alderson (2017), and co-author of Postcolonial Locations: New Directions in Postcolonial Studies, with Anastasia Valassopoulos (2020). 

Explores several novels about dictatorships from Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire and Kenya produced during the period of neoliberalism

Combines a macro-level discussion of postcolonial Africa with a micro-level focus on the formal, linguistic and thematic details of these works of fiction

Argues that close readings of literary fiction can aid our understanding of the enduring problem of authoritarian state structures in postcolonial Africa