This seminar presentation identifies Nigeria as the powerhouse of the modern African novel and briefly suggests reasons for this. Taking the last twenty years as its time-frame it demonstrates the remarkable diversity of the contemporary Nigerian novel in respect of subject-matter, theme and form. Despite that diversity, certain trends can be identified and the speaker examines the following amongst these: (i) a concern with key conflicts, such as the Delta region crisis; (ii) the emergence of the LGBTQ-themed novel; (iii) a willingness to experiment with focalization and to explore ways of seeing, knowing, telling; (iv) a concern with Afropolitanism.

Chris Dunton is an alumnus of Wadham College, Oxford, and a specialist in African Literature and in Rhetoric Studies applied to African texts. Now an independent scholar, he has worked at universities in Nigeria, Libya and South Africa, and as a freelance scholar in Cameroon and Peru. Most recently he was Professor and Dean of Humanities at the National University of Lesotho.