Magical Realism in Africa

Magical realism has deep roots across many African languages and regions. This book explores African magical realism from a transregional and inclusive approach, drawing on contributions from different literary genres across the continent. The chapters in this book constitute a sustained and insightful reflection on the salient components of this literary genre as well as evaluating its connections to themes of conflict, violence, women's rights, trauma, oppression, culture, governance, and connecting to the African self. As well as theorizing magical realism, this book engages with African expressive performance across various formats, novels, plays, and films. This book investigates African magical realism from its origins up to the present day, where local oral traditions link indigenous cosmogonic stories with Western literature, as well as with the specific narrative traditions of Arabo-Islamic literature. The rich analysis draws on works from across the continent, including Egypt, Sudan, Mauritania, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, and Mozambique. This book is a timely contribution to debates within African literature, cultural anthropology, ethnography, and folklore.

Sarali Gintsburg (Ph.D. 2014) is a researcher at the Institute for Culture and Society (University of Navarra, Spain). She is also a Ramón y Cajal fellow (2024-2030). She published on the subject of contemporary Arabic literature, comparative literature, folklore, and spatiotemporal aspects of Arabic narrative. Geographically, her research interests include North Africa and the periphery of the Arab World. Kenneth Usongo received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver, USA, and a doctorate in English Literary Studies from the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon. In addition to his books Character and the Supernatural in Shakespeare and Achebe, The Cultural and Historical Heritage of Colonialism, Politics and Romance in Shakespeare's Four Great Tragedies, Art and Political Thought in Bole Butake, The Rising Sun and Boma, and Ruminations of Ipome, he has also published 32 essays on British, postcolonial, and African American literature in various journals and edited collections. He has been a professor at several universities and colleges in Cameroon and the United States and now teaches at Colorado Academy.

Introduction: Retracing Magical Realism 1. Worldview, Traditions, and Trends in African Magical Realism 2. Narrating the War and Its Aftermath: Perceptions of Liminality in Mia Couto's Terra Sonâmbula and José Eduardo Agualusa's Barroco Tropical 3. Behind the Magical Veil: Interrogating Cameroon's Politics and History in Bole Butake's Lake God 4. Magical Realism in Modern Swahili Literature 5. Female Plight and Magical Realism: A Study of Rebeka Njau's The Sacred Seed and Okwiri Oduor's Things They Lost 6. The Local Roots of Magical Realism in Sudanese Fiction 7. African Magical Realism Goes Visual: Two Short Films from African Folktales Reimagined (Netflix-UNESCO, 2023) 8. The Return of the Repressed: Magical Realism in Salwa Bakr's The Golden Chariot and Ibrahim Al-Koni's The Bleeding of the Stone