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Abstract
In this article the interpretation of two Swahili novels by the Zanzibari writer Said Ahmed Mohamed, Babu alipofufuka (Grandpa's Resurrection) and Dunia yao (Their World), will be related to the current critical debates around the interrelationships between postmodernism and African literatures. In the African context, postmodernism, a broad category which refers to a wide range of literary discourses and practices that disrupt rationality, unity, and exclusivity, can be linked to the writer's aspiration to dismantle the realistic trend and its implicit optimistic view of national development, which characterized the emergence of modern African literatures after independence. The aim of the article is to focus on the Afrophone novel, by exploring some of the new literary techniques employed by Said Ahmed Mohamed and relating them to the writer's changing perspectives on East African society.
Notes
1. The contents are partially based on a paper I presented at the Swahili Kolloquium XXV conference, which included the ‘DUNIA YAO. Utopia/Dystopia: Imagining Society in Swahili Fiction’ workshop (Iwalewa Haus, University of Bayreuth, 17–20 May 2012).
2. These include Mkangi's Walenisi (Those-Are-Us, 1995), Mbogo's Vipuli vya figo (Kidney Trafficking, 1996), Mkufya's Ziraili na Zirani (Angel of Death and Zirani, 1999), Wamitila's Bina-Adamu! (The Wonder Man, 2002), and the works discussed in this article.
3. Post-independence Swahili prose (and its realist features) obviously did not develop in a void. Its background was the dialectic coexistence of oral narrative traditions with the written prose produced in the pre-colonial, early missionary, and colonial times. These writings consisted mainly of chronicles, memoirs, and reportages by East Africans, mostly in Arabic script, along with the first translations of the Bible by Europeans, which opened the way to a large output of Roman-script Swahili texts. These works (educational booklets and translations of Western literature) were provided by colonial officers and other British nationals in order to spread and ‘standardise’ the Swahili language. Within missionary and colonial spaces (newspapers, literary competitions), new written genres in Swahili started to be practised by East Africans and Shaaban Robert (1909–1962) is considered the greatest of these writers (Bertoncini Zúbková et al. Citation2009, 11–43).
4. The Swahili realist trend (sometimes infused with romantic, fantastic, or surrealist elements) can be regarded as intrinsically related to the development of national discursive practices, not only through the reconstruction of the history and the cultural dignity of African societies, but also as a vehicle of socio-political reflections, criticism, and even satire, such as in the case of Kezilahabi's novels Dunia uwanja wa fujo (The World is a Chaotic Place, 1975) and Gamba la nyoka (The Snake's Skin, 1979).
5. Said Ahmed Mohamed has written three collections of poems, five plays, a number of children's books, four collections of short stories and nine novels, Asali chungu (Bitter Honey, 1977), Utengano (Separation, 1980), Dunia mti mkavu (The World is a Dry Tree, 1980), Kiza katika nuru (Darkness in the Light, 1988), Tata za Asumini (The Enigmas of Asumini, 1990), Babu alipofufuka (Grandpa's Resurrection, 2001), Dunia yao (Their World, Citation2006), Nyuso za mwanamke (Woman's Faces, 2010) and Mhanga nafsi yangu (I Sacrificed my Soul, 2012).
6. Said Ahmed Mohamed has also published several scholarly titles, for example. Vito vya hekima, simo na maneno ya mshangao (Jewels of Wisdom, Idioms and Exclamations, 1974), Misemo, milio na tashbihi (Sayings, Onomatopoeias and Similes, 1978), Mbinu na mazoezi ya ushairi (Poetic Devices and Exercises, 1990), Kunga za nathari ya Kiswahili (Teachings on Swahili Prose, 1995), and many articles on linguistics and literary criticism (under his complete name, Said Ahmed Mohamed Khamis); some essays are included in my bibliography.
7. The term Verfremdungseffekt (translated into English as alienation effect or, more recently, as estrangement or defamiliarization effect) was first used by Brecht in an essay on Chinese acting to illustrate a method meant ‘to make the incidents represented appear strange to the public’ (Willett, Citation1964, 91). It is a central concept in Brecht's elaboration of the epic theatre, that is, a play production which distances the audience from the events in order to engage them critically.
8. His literary efforts have been parallel to his linguistic and lexicographic research, including the first dictionary of Swahili synonyms, Kamusi ya Visawe (with Mohamed A. Mohamed), published in 1998 by East African Publishers of Nairobi.
9. All translations from Swahili to English quoted in the article are mine.
10. Proteus, in Greek mythology, was the prophetic old man of the sea and shepherd of the sea's flocks. He knew all things – past, present, and future – but disliked divulging what he knew. Because Proteus could assume whatever shape he pleased, he came to be regarded by some as a symbol of the original matter from which the world was created. The word protean, one meaning of which is ‘changeable in shape or form’, is derived from Proteus (Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed January 12, 2014. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/480043/Proteus).
11. Siti binti Saad and Bakari Abeid are two famous taarab artists from Zanzibar.
12. Alfu Leila u Leila is the title of the Swahili translation of The Thousand and One Nights. Some folk stories or elements of the collection (which includes, amongst others, Persian, Indian, Arabic, and Egyptian traditions) were already known among the Swahili, transmitted both through Arabic books and in oral forms, but they were probably recognized as belonging to a single corpus only through the 1929 edition by Frederick Johnson and Edward H. Brenn (Geider Citation2008, 74). The image of the burnt books may refer to censorship: in the 1970s, for ideological reasons, the reprinted editions were first considerably revised and later made practically unavailable.
13. The Aristos (1964) is a collection of essays by John Fowles.
14. I translated in this way because Mohamed does not use the more common Swahili term for intertextuality, that is mwingilianomatini (see Wamitila Citation2003, 369).