The book brings together twenty three new essays on aspects of literary stylistics, narrative and sign studies in the key literary genres of prose, poetry and drama. Using the views of leading exponents of literary stylistics, narratology and also semiotics, the essayists engage critically a range of representative works by major African writers such as Ananda Devi, Sylvie Kande, Adelaide Fassinou, Calixthe Beyala, Ben Okri, T. O. Echewa, Ngugi, Nuruddin Farah, Aminatta Forna, Niyi Osundare, Tanure Ojaide, Isaac William Wauchope and various Anglophone Tanzanian poets as well as Mvula Ya...

Postcolonial and contemporary African literatures have always been marked by an acute sensitivity to the politics of language, an attentiveness inscribed in the linguistic fabric of their own modes of expression. It is curious however, that despite the prevalence of a much-touted 'linguistic turn' in twentieth century theory and cultural production, language has frequently been neglected by literary studies in general. Even more curiously, postcolonial literary studies, an erstwhile emergent and now established discipline which has from the outset contained important elements of linguistic...