Historicity and Cameroonian Fiction: Writing the Nation

Historicity and Cameroonian Fiction: Writing the Nation

Victor N.  Gomia

 Delaware State University, USA

Abstract

The peculiarity of Cameroonian fiction is seen in part by its relation to history, considered both on the one hand, as events that unfolded and, on the other hand, the narrating of those events. The literature does not limit itself to the colonialist cum neo-colonialist exploits and the peoples’ resistance to it; it is as well carving out an identifiable politico-cultural consciousness as part of the process of coming to terms with the new world reality. From Fedinand Oyono, Mongo Beti and Ngong Winkuo who focus their attention to the eventful colonial era through Linus Asong, Francis Nyamnjoh and Shaddrack Ambanasom who are preoccupied with the upheavals of the postcolonial setting, the Cameroonian novelists are spinning an inciting yarn in the loom of postcolonial discourse. In this paper, I elect to explore selected Cameroonian fiction as analogous to the nation building process.

Keywords: Cameroonian, History, Nation, Colonial, Postcolonial