This lively and timely book addresses broad theoretical issues surrounding the
evolution and characteristics of Nigeria’s third-generation literature. By sifting
through the vast panorama of Nigerian literary history, Ode Ogede tries to
discern patterns. He affirms that the third-generation literature emerged
between the late 1980s and the early 1990s and is marked by expressive
modes and concerns distinctly different from those of the preceding era.
Nigeria’s third-generation literature reflects new sensibilities and anxieties about
the country’s changing fortunes in the post-colonial era. The literature of the third

generation is startling in its candidness, irreverence as well as the brutal self-
disclosure of its characters, and it is governed by an unusually wide-ranging sweep in

narrative techniques. Six key texts of the oeuvre in particular are the focus of the
investigation: Maria Ajima’s The Web, Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc., Teju Cole’s
Open City, Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters Street, Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of
Baba Segi’s Wives, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck.
The texts interpret contemporary corruption and other unspeakable social malaise;
together, they point to the exciting future of Nigerian literature, which has always
been defined by its daring creativity and inventive expressive modes. Even

conventional storytelling strategies receive revitalizing energies in these angst-
driven narratives, the examination establishes.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers of contemporary
African literature, Sociology, Gender and women’s studies, and post-colonial
cultural expression more broadly.