... improvisers of the new. Characters such as Toloki in Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying (1995), Ahl in Nuruddin Farah's Crossbones (2011), and Kotchikpa, the boy narrator in Uwem Akpan's “Fattening for Gabon” (2008), each navigate a terrain of insecurity to improbable ends. They challenge us to rethink our assumptions...

... in quality and mode of address, from the pulpy Indian bestsellers of Chetan Bhagat and 1990s Egyptian novels usually characterized by their nihilism and stylistic poverty to Uwem Akpan's Oprah-featured African short story collection and prestigious prizewinners in global fiction by cosmopolitans...

... Coundouriotis finds in the works of Zakes Mda, Nuruddin Farah, and Uwem Akpan. As opposed to Balzac's insistence on probability, a refusal to restore or redeem that made sense in the context of French embourgeoisement, the exigencies of postcolonial South Africa, Somalia, and West Africa call forth...