Abstract
M.A.
The Nigeria-Biafra War has elicited a corpus of literature which thematises the hydra-headed problematic of nationhood that embodies ethnicity, politics and history. A recent contribution is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s award-winning Half of a Yellow Sun (henceforth, Yellow Sun) which reveals interesting affinities between Adichie and Chinua Achebe, and suggests the influence of Achebe on her. The centrality of Biafra to these writers (both are of Igbo or ‘Biafran’ extraction) foregrounds concerns about the links between literary production, identity politics and the narrative of the nation. At a time marked by the resurgence of sub-nationalist notions in Nigeria, it becomes fitting to review the growing ‘Biafra discourse’ as enunciated in recent Nigerian fiction. It is argued that in Yellow Sun and Achebe's most recent novel Anthills of the Savannah (henceforth, Anthills) both writers espouse notions of nationhood which privilege the ethnic group mainly through a valorisation of the Igbo people of south-eastern Nigeria who constituted the defunct Biafra republic. This dissertation examines how both novels depict difference and deploy historical revision to fetishise ethnic identity in their enunciation of ethno-nationalism. It also explores the degree to which Yellow Sun may reflect the influence of Anthills, both ideologically and stylistically. In this regard, the study interrogates the peculiar narratological features of both novels. The predominant research method applied is close reading, and the theoretical framework incorporates theories of narratology, influence and intertextuality as well as postcolonial notions of nationalism, historicisation, difference and representation. The study draws significantly on the scholarship of Frederic Jameson, Mieke Bal, Harold Bloom and Imre Szeman among others.
Keywords: narratology, nationalism, historicisation, representation, ethnicity, difference, other/otherness/othering, representation, intertextuality, Nigeria, Biafra, civil war.