Why read Naturalizing Africa?

Book cover of Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature

Book description

The problem of environmental degradation on the African continent is a severe one. In this book, Cajetan Iheka analyzes how African literary texts have engaged with pressing ecological problems in Africa, including the Niger Delta oil pollution in Nigeria, ecologies of war in Somalia, and animal abuses. Analyzing narratives by…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Naturalizing Africa as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Nick Wood

Author

This book provides a detailed and trenchant analysis of how African novels have sought ways of reflecting and resisting the destruction wrought by colonial occupations and neo-colonial extractive capitalism. This analysis thoughtfully includes ‘nonhuman life’ and the need to ‘redefine our notion of personhood to include other beings that we do not normally ascribe to this (yet with whom our ecological history remains deeply entangled).’ Iheka also points out how Africa has ostensibly been demarcated as a ‘sacrifice zone’ by other major global powers (many of who benefited from the colonial enterprise) and how African fiction attempts to decentre narrative…

From Nick's list on The best African climate speculative fiction/fact (SF) books.