Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- EDITORIAL ARTICLE: War in African Literature: Literary Harvests, Human Tragedies
- ARTICLES
- The Muted Index of War in African Literature & Society
- ‘Life in the Camp of the Enemy’: Alemseged Tesfai's Theatre of War
- Sacrifice & the Contestation of Identity in Chukwuemeka Ike's Sunset at Dawn
- Of War & Madness: A Symbolic Transmutation of the Nigeria–Biafra War in Select Stories from The Insider: Stories of War & Peace from Nigeria
- Becoming a Feminist Writer: Representation of the Subaltern in Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra
- Politics & Human Rights in Non-Fiction Prison Literature
- Problems of Representing the Zimbabwean War of Liberation in Mutasa's The Contact, Samupindi's Pawns & Vera's The Stone Virgins
- The Need to Go Further? Dedication & Distance in the War Narratives of Alexandra Fuller & Alexander Kanengoni
- History, Memoir & a Soldier's Conscience: Philip Efiong's Nigeria & Biafra: My Story
- Of the Versification of Pain: Nigerian Civil War Poetry
- REVIEWS
- Index
History, Memoir & a Soldier's Conscience: Philip Efiong's Nigeria & Biafra: My Story
from ARTICLES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- EDITORIAL ARTICLE: War in African Literature: Literary Harvests, Human Tragedies
- ARTICLES
- The Muted Index of War in African Literature & Society
- ‘Life in the Camp of the Enemy’: Alemseged Tesfai's Theatre of War
- Sacrifice & the Contestation of Identity in Chukwuemeka Ike's Sunset at Dawn
- Of War & Madness: A Symbolic Transmutation of the Nigeria–Biafra War in Select Stories from The Insider: Stories of War & Peace from Nigeria
- Becoming a Feminist Writer: Representation of the Subaltern in Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra
- Politics & Human Rights in Non-Fiction Prison Literature
- Problems of Representing the Zimbabwean War of Liberation in Mutasa's The Contact, Samupindi's Pawns & Vera's The Stone Virgins
- The Need to Go Further? Dedication & Distance in the War Narratives of Alexandra Fuller & Alexander Kanengoni
- History, Memoir & a Soldier's Conscience: Philip Efiong's Nigeria & Biafra: My Story
- Of the Versification of Pain: Nigerian Civil War Poetry
- REVIEWS
- Index
Summary
The postmodern interrogation of the very ontology of history continues to extend the frontiers of fiction. With the accessibility of history predicated on memory and its representation on textuality, history invariably tends to replicate the processes of fiction, given that memory is selective and that the textualized event is narrated. Noting this interface between fiction and history, the South African novelist and scholar, Andre Brink (1998), remarks that the (auto)biography like history is seen to be based on what is consensually approved as real but contends that
Even when a story tacitly narrates an event ‘based on reality’ it is infused with, and transformed by, the notoriously unreliable complex of private motivations, hidden agendas, prejudices, suspicions, biographical quirks, chips on the shoulder, and conditions that constitute the idiosyncratic, individual mind. (p.39)
Yet if the (auto)biography is marked by a colourful reinvention of the past, official historiography, created to perpetuate the status quo, demonstrably derives its hegemonic power by professionally simultaneously ‘mythologizing’ history while reinforcing the myth of history as a disinterested and objective record of events. Thus the memoir, an individual's record of their perception of momentous public events, subjective, biased, represents an invaluable interrogation of and complement to official chronicles, even while remaining a literary event.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- War in African Literature Today , pp. 112 - 127Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008