Description
This is a selection from an historic collection. The interviews cone from the Transcription Centre recordings and fit in with the overail developrment of African writing during the sixties. They began in 1962, the same year as the African Writers Series, and continued until 1969. During this period many of these writers were being published for the first time outside Africa.
Where there is a sequence of interviews one sees the developnent of the writer’s ideals and aims. In nost cases there are two or three interviews.
They help in a stock-taking of the writers. One learns much about how they write and how they feel about key topics such as negritude or commitment.
In the period from 1962 to 1964 there are attermpts to define African Literature. From 1964 to 1966 there is a shift in emphasis towards consideration of the here and now and there is more talk of cormmit- ment. In the third period a new critical awareness begins to deveiop.
Many of the interviews were conducted by Lewis Nkosi and Robert Serumaga. Nkosi tends to examine the literary background. Serumaga assumes that the audience already has considerable knowiedge and requires a confession by the writer about his phílosophy and working methods.
This is a remarkable book which charts the key decade at the beginnin of the development of literature in English from Africa.
DENNIS DUERDEN is Director of the Transcription Centre. He is a painter and has written several books on African Art.
COSMO PIETERSE is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio University. He has worked in London as an actor and broadcaster for several years. His anthologies of plays and critical writing are well known.
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