Political Turmoil and Lack of Rights in Nigerian Literature
Abstract
Contemporary Nigerian literature has been strongly influenced by the events that marked the recent history of the country: from British colonization to the Biafra war, to the conflict that opposed the central government and the Mosop army on river Niger’s delta. These events have often been characterized by the suspension or substitution of the current legal order, a doubtful application of international law, a legally enforced repression of the opposition. This essay covers the fifty years going from the release of Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart (1958: a book about british missionary’s arrival in the country) to the fictional and non fictional production by Wole Soyinka (1972), Ken Saro Wiwa (1985) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006) on the civil war of 1967-70. Creating a dialogue between these texts, its goal is to underline the result of the conflict between law and literature offering an overview on a national literature almost condemned to represent law as a utopian myth, an abuse, a war between incompatible codes.
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