The exodus of a new generation of Nigerian writers has sparked discussions about the state of Nigerian literature in recent times. Some have asserted that Nigerian literature is dead or dying and that writing from within a Nigerian context, from home, is becoming an endangered art.
The year is 1997. Mirrorwork, a new anthology of Indian writing has just been published and Arundhati Roy appears alongside Salman Rushdie on the now-defunct (for good reason) Charlie Rose’, on a press tour. They are talking about the literati, the promise of India’s cultural power and its surge of new writing in verdant English as personified by Roy. The occasion is India’s independence golden jubilee. Parts of the interview play out like a duel. A young Roy appears to be fighting to control a narrative with fixed positions. She can choose the ‘optimism’ of the West looking at a sub-continent on the verge of global recognition and economic boom or the pessimism of the citizen informed by all the attendant problems of a post-colony. New to the international writer game, citizen Roy chooses pessimism. For Roy, the citizen is caught in a complex role play, ‘welcoming the West and fighting it at the same time.’ The writer as citizen walks a national tightrope, risking—in the case of Rushdie—life, and imaginative freedom. The fourth person on the table, the former United Nations bureau chief for the New York Times, Barbara Crossette, has done some time in India. She is full of expatriate insight...
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