Ifeoma Okoye: socialist-feminist political horizons in Nigerian literature

SUMMARY

Nigerian author Ifeoma Okoye’s novel The Fourth World, published in 2013, presents us with a truly 21st century African unified socialist-feminist theory, while it places individual growth firmly in the community of an eponymous shanty in Enugu, Igboland. Through this novel, we observe how dictates of survival are transformed into acts of moral choice through the agency of work by a young girl of extraordinary character, helped by the congeniality of the community and by radical organisers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Adam Mayer is Assistant Professor of International Relations at University of Kurdistan Hewler, in Iraqi Kurdistan. His interest in Nigerian and West African radicalism was born when he taught Politics at American University of Nigeria, in Yola, Adamawa State for three years (2010–2013). His monograph Naija Marxisms: revolutionary thought in Nigeria (2016, Pluto Press) traces the development of Marxist theory in the context of labour politics, feminism, and the fight for meaningful democracy in the country.

ORCID

Adam Mayer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4129-5004

Notes

1. Okoye's novel The Fourth World was first published in hard copy in Nigeria in 2013. Since then, it has been reprinted a number of times until 2018, essentially on demand, with a peak in 2016. It is also available in the UK, published by the author herself, in an Amazon Kindle edition (2013). See above, in the section titled The Fourth World: Bildungsroman and magnum opus, for more details on the challenging publishing environment for the author in Nigeria.