Books in the African Perspectives series

The work of renowned Ivoirian playwright Koffi Kwahule has been translated into some 15 languages and is performed regularly throughout Europe, Africa, and the Americas. For the first time, Seven Plays of Koffi Kwahule: In and Out of Africa makes available to an Anglophone audience some of his best and most representative plays.

Under apartheid, black South Africans engaged with an array of textual and visual cultures in ways that shaped their responses to this period of ethical crisis. Marshalling forms of historical evidence, this book considers the importance of popular genres and audiences in the relationship between ethical consciousness and aesthetic engagement.

Examines how issues of ideal womanhood shaped the Anglophone Cameroonian nationalist movement in the first decade of independence in Cameroon. The book defines and uses the concept of embodied nationalism to illustrate the political importance of women's everyday behaviour.

Argues that the quality of citizens' interactions with the government through service provision sends them important signals about what they can hope to gain from political action. These interactions influence not only formal political behaviours, but also collective behaviour, political engagement, and subversive behaviours like tax evasion.

Illuminates how issues of ideal womanhood shaped the Anglophone Cameroonian nationalist movement in the first decade of independence. The book examines how formally educated women sought to protect the cultural values and the self-determination of the Anglophone Cameroonian state as Francophone Cameroon prepared to dismantle the federal republic.

Despite the central role that animals play in African writing and daily life, African literature and African thinkers remain conspicuously absent from the field of animal studies. This book demonstrates the importance of African writing to animal studies.

The Chadian writer Nimrod is one of the most dynamic and vital voices in contemporary African literature and thought. Yet little of Nimrod's writing has been translated into English until now. Frieda Ekotto provides context for Nimrod's work and demonstrates the urgency of making it available beyond Francophone Africa.

The Nigerian and West African practice of aso ebi fashion invokes notions of wealth and group dynamics in social gatherings. This book investigates the practice in the cosmopolitan urban setting of Lagos, and argues that the visual and consumerist hype typical of the late capitalist system feeds this unique fashion practice.

Examines the ways that accountability offers an effective interpretive lens to the social, cultural, and institutional struggles of both the elites and ordinary citizens in Africa. Each chapter investigates questions of power, its public deliberation, and its negotiation in Africa by studying elites through the framework of accountability.