“Paying tribute to one of Africa’s [genuine] literary heavyweights: Eustace James Taiwo Palmer”

Abstract

With works such as An Introduction to the African Novel, The Growth of the African Novel, Studies on the English Novel and several others, Eustace Palmer has been rightly lauded as a pioneering and well established critic of African and, to some extent, English fiction. The goal of this essay, however, is to show ways in which Palmer’s world expands way beyond that of literary criticism. Drawing examples from his experiences as a university teacher—he was nominated for a “Professor of the Year” prize awarded by a national organization in the US—a university administrator, a leader of a global professional body, and his work as a creative writer, I have shown how Palmer’s commitment to the ideals of education and social justice have shone in everything that he does. His dedication to the study of African literature has been exemplary; it is thus fitting that, upon his retirement from university teaching, readers and practitioners of African literature would not only salute the essential and necessary service Eustace Palmer has rendered in the criticism of African fiction but to start looking at what seems like a new phase of his life—that of a writer of fiction.

Keywords:

• African novel
• criticism
• new fiction
• dystopia

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