Satire in Post-Independence African Novel: A Study of Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People and Ngugi Wa Thiango’s Wizard of the Crow

Abstract: This study examined Satire in Post-Independence African Novel: A Study of Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People and Ngugi Wa Thiango’s Wizard of the Crow. The Post-independence African novel reflects disillusionment of writers with African reality. Corruption, mainly political, and of other forms is scrutinized by these writers in their fictional renderings. As such satire has become a favorite form of writing for them to express their disillusionment. This paper attempts to analyze Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People and Ngugi Wa Thiango’s Wizard of the Crow as political satires. This has been done by exploring different techniques these writers have used that qualify these works as satires. The paper aims at showing how these writers create a world that the desire rejects and how that world is related to African reality. It is to be noted that though both the works are satires, yet the methods used by the writers are not the same. While A Man of the People is written in realistic mode, Wizard of the Crow is a sort of fantasy where the author, apart from using traditional way of storytelling, has taken recourse of magic realism. Satire in Post-Independence African Novel: A Study of Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People and Ngugi Wa Thiango’s Wizard of the Crow.

Originally posted on October 28, 2021 @ 3:41 am