Beschreibung
The book offers an understanding of the autobiographical genre in contemporary Kenyan literature.
It draws attention to life writing as a form of cultural re-imagination in post-colonial Africa. Taking into consideration contradictions and paradoxes of referentiality in life writing, the book examines the autobiographies of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Wangari Maathai and Bethwell Ogot. The analysis dwells on self-representations in correlation with imaginations of the Kenyan nation in these works. Thus the study gives a critical account into the modern memoir: the forms and styles it takes, the ways in which these authors tend to understand and present their lives.
Samuel Ndogo is a graduate in African Literature from the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth, Germany.
