In a collection of sixteen essays, Gagiano addresses more than twenty texts from various African regions and periods. The works discussed here range from transcriptions of ancient (Khoikhoi/San) folktales to some of the classic texts of the African English literary canon and include recent writing about urgent contemporary social and gender issues. As the title indicates, Annie Gagiano’s focus is on the way these texts engage with the forces that damage and threaten life and quality of life in various African contexts. She pays tribute—by means of carefully argued analyses—to the authors’ political courage and social concern and to their subtle delineations of their African characters’ experiences. Central to her focus is the verbal artistry of these authors’ memorable and complex representations. Her collection as a whole insists on the philosophical and aesthetic importance of African texts of the kind discussed here—to the global reading public as much as to the ‘real world’ of their original contexts. Along with a new preface, several new essays have been added to the new 2014 edition to bring the collection up to date with the latest developments in the field of study.
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Annie Gagiano has taught literature since the seventies in the English Department of the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, where she is at present a professor emeritus and research associate. Her teaching has focused particularly on African and postcolonial literature, Shakespeare, and poetry. Her numerous articles have appeared in academic journals and in edited collections of essays in South Africa, Europe, Asia, and the U.S.A. Her book, ‘Achebe, Head, Marechera: On Power and Change in Africa’ (2000), was published in the United States and Britain by Lynne Rienner. At a more popular level she writes the regular column ‘The African Library’ on classic and contemporary African texts for the electronic magazine ‘Lit Net’. The first edition of ‘Dealing with Evils’ was published by ibidem in 2008.
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