Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives: From Ethiopia Unbound to Things Fall Apart, 1911-1958

Donald Wehrs explores pioneering narrative representations of pre-colonial African history and society in texts by Casely Hayford, Alhaji Sir Abubaker Tafawa Balewa, Paul Hazoumé, D.O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, and Chinua Achebe. By highlighting the role of pre-colonial political economies and articulations of state power on colonial-era considerations of ethical and political issues, his book supplements recent work on the importance of indigenous contexts and discourses in situating colonial-era narratives.

Donald R. Wehrs is Associate Professor of English at Auburn University, USA, where he teaches postcolonial studies, comparative literature, and eighteenth-century British literature. He is the author of African Feminist Fiction and Indigenous Values (2001), and his essays on postcolonial, British, and European literature have appeared in Modern Language Notes, New Literary History, Ariel, Modern Philology, College Literature, Studies in English Literature, and English Literary History.