In this survey of theatre forms in sub-Saharan Africa from pre-colonial times to the present day, popular theatre is interpreted widely to include not only conventional drama, but such non-literary forms of performance as dance, mime, dramatised story-telling, masquerades, improvised urban vaudeville theatre, and the theatre of resistance and social action. The book also considers theatre embedded in the modern media of film, radio and television. Kenya: EAEP

In this collection Ngugi is concerned with moving the centre in two senses - between nations and within nations - in order to contribute to the freeing of world cultures from the restrictive walls of nationalism, class, race and gender Between nations the need is to move the centre from its assumed location in the West to a multiplicity of spheres in all the cultures of the world. Within nations the move should be away from all minority class establishments to the real creative centre among working people in conditions of racial, religious and gender equality. Kenya: EAEP

This biography details the life of Bessie Head - a life which echoes so many of the aspects of the distressing history of South Africa in the last half century. She was born in an asylum to a mother who was considered mad because her father was black. Despite the disadvantages of being both a person of mixed race and a woman, she made her way in South Africa as a journalist. Her exile in rural Botswana was in marked contrast to the intensely urban backgrounds of most other South African writers. Her fierce determination to take root was reflected in her first novel Where Rain Clouds Gather....

Interviews with Kofi Anyidoho, Kofi Awoonor, Mohammed ben Abdallah, Chinua Achebe, Odia Ofeimun, Ben Okri, Wole Soyinka, Micere Githae Mugo, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Mazisi Kunene, Njabulo Ndebele, Essop Patel, Mongane Wally Serote, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Musaemura Bonas Zimunya. Among the subjects discussed in these lively interviews are the role of literary institutions, language policies, the development of written and oral cultures, and the social and political problems of post-colonial Africa.

Simon Gikandi has set out to reveal '...the very nature of (Achebe's) creativity, its prodigious complexity and richness...its paradoxes and ambiguities. This is scholarship of real stature and supersedes all other studies of Achebe's writing. It comes at a good time. Achebe's literary reputation is equal to that of any living author and a substantial critical canon has been established. - G.D. Killam, Professor of English, University of Guelph Kenya: EAEP

'This book makes a strong and compelling statement about the position of women writers and women in contemporary Africa using the words of the writers themselves', says Dennis Duerden, the author of the earlier African Writers Talking.