The critic as a novelist: migrating between writing genres, execution, executing, and self-determination in Eustace Palmer’s A Hanging is Announced

Abstract

Eustace Palmer was an established African literary critic for three decades before publishing his first novel. Using Palmer’s views about the qualities that define good fiction, this essay evaluates how and to what extent he has performed the African novel writing conventions that he spent decades codifying and refereeing. The essay argues that Palmer’s migration from critic to novelist mirrors modern African literature’s progression from the orthodoxy of inherited traditions to the freedom of self-determined creativity.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Arthur Onipede Hollist

Arthur Onipede Hollist (aka Pede Hollist) is an award-winning fiction writer and African literature professor at The University of Tampa. His interests cover the literary and critical expressions of the African continent and diaspora. He has published one novel, multiple short stories and critical articles in peer-reviewed periodicals. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Sierra Leone from 2017–2018.