1st Edition
Magical Realism in Africa Literary and Dramatic Explorations
Introduction: Retracing Magical Realism
Kenneth Usongo and Sarali Gintsburg
1. Worldview, Traditions, and Trends in African Magical Realism
Théophile Ambadiang Omengele
2. Narrating the War and Its Aftermath: Perceptions of Liminality in Mia Couto’s Terra Sonâmbula and José Eduardo Agualusa’s Barroco Tropical
Jessica Falconi and Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues
3. Behind the Magical Veil: Interrogating Cameroon’s Politics and History in Bole Butake’s Lake God
Kenneth Usongo
4. Magical Realism in Modern Swahili Literature
Mikhail Gromov
5. Female Plight and Magical Realism: A Study of Rebeka Njau’s The Sacred Seed and Okwiri Oduor’s Things They Lost
Alina Rinkanya
6. The Local Roots of Magical Realism in Sudanese Fiction
Xavier Luffin
7. African Magical Realism Goes Visual: Two Short Films from African Folktales Reimagined (Netflix-UNESCO, 2023)
Sarali Gintsburg
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
Abida Younas and Kawthar Yasser N Al-Othman
Biography
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.
Africa was literary. Africa is now literature. Magical!
Gonzalo Fernández Parrilla, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, author of Al sur de Tánger
This work adds to the mature and growing analyses of Africa's great literary tradition. Every student of global literature and/or African Studies should add it to their library.
Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor and Chair African and African American Studies, State University of New York at Brockport
