Literary historians tell us that the English novel preceded the short story by a hundred years or thereabouts. In modern African Literature events happened differently. The short story came first-a far more logical development, if one may presume to say so. And we did not, of course, have centuries but decades to play with.
In 1951 F.J. Pedler, a respected British civil servant with considerable experience of West African affairs, published a little book titled, simply, West Africa in Home Study Books, a prestigious series which enlisted the expertise of Britain's leaders in science, the arts, and public affairs to present in a lucid, nontechnical style recent advances in knowledge in their various fields. I suppose West Africa earned a position in the company of such topics as Russian literature, modern psychology, and organic chemistry, etc., on account of its accelerating pace of change from colonial dependency toward self-rule, a process which would change the face of the whole continent in one short decade and even encourage Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to tell South Africans of all people about "a wind of change."
Although Pedler's book was altogether free of the stereotypes of European colonial literature, it was in some ways remarkably advanced for its time. For example, he told his readers the startling news that African men did not buy their wives. "It is misleading," he wrote, "when Europeans talk of Africans buying a wife," and thus assailed a pet notion which Europeans had invented and cherished and recycled again and again in popular as well as serious literature. The well-known British writer Joyce Cary had exploited this very notion in the crudest manner imaginable a few years earlier in one of the "great" novels of African denigration called Mister Johnson.
We have gone beyond the era when the African writer stated much as Chinua Achebe did, "I would be perfectly satisfied if my work, particularly when I speak of the past, was to teach my readers at least my compatriots that their past, with all its imperfections, was not a long dark night for society, from which the Europeans delivered them." Or as Bernth Lindfors later wrote, "instead of representing Africa as a barbarous wilderness where savages lived in a permanent state of anarchy until the white man came bringing peace, law, or-der, religion, and a "higher" form of civilization, Achebe showed how Africans led decent, moral lives in well-regulated societies that placed strict legal and religious constraints on human behaviour. Indeed, according to Achebe, things did not fall apart in Africa until Europe intruded and set every-thing off balance by introducing alien codes which Africans were then told to live by. Europe did not bring light and peace to the Dark Continent: it brought chaos and confusion."
The new generation of writers is more determined, theirs is a loftier goal.
"The African writer cannot and must not take pen in hand merely to offer pretty expressions and phrases. As the product of a society that has its problems, he can and must help in their presentation so that each person becomes completely aware of them, so that people think of them, and look for their solution. If that is what it means to be a committed writer, then that is what I am," said Aminata Sow Fall, the prominent Senegalese author in an interview, adding, "Our literature must raise issues that summon men to devise solutions to problems that are specifically ours, problems which, although existing in other places, take on a special dimension in our country."
These specific problems, related to their inherited past or to conflicts brought by the new era, are reflected in almost all the works originating in this large, heterogeneous continent with its countless different peoples, religions, languages, and customs. These shared situations of conflict include making the transition from childhood to maturity, moving from a rural to an urban environment, the encounter and collision with foreign or Western cultures, rebellion against colonial exploitation, and themes that often prevail in the most re-cent works-disappointment with the new movement and merciless criticism of corruption, unemployment and dishonor, exploitation, and adopting others' (western) values. All these conflicts rightfully find their place in African prose.
Achieving national independence brought with it liberation from the linguistic domination of the colonizer, and a re-treat from Western writing models in order to reach original solutions, regardless of the fact that the colonizer's language is often still used. The problem of which language to write in is a frequent dilemma of African authors and has been ever-present since the Negritude movement (1934) when Senghor wondered whether the "music, melody and rhythm comprising the essence of poetry could be written in another's language." After fifty years, these words still resound in the statement by Congolese Labou Tansi, "We must attempt to shatter the frigid French language... trying to lend it the opulence, the twinkle of our tropic temperament, the breathiness of our languages." This dilemma has still not been resolved. Writing in one's own language means a small reading public-due to the enormous number of languages spoken in Africa and due to illiteracy.
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