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This paper focuses on Kenyan writer, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's paradoxical engagement with Christianity and its topology. Against his increasingly hostile attitude towards the Christian establishment in a post-colonial space, the paper interrogates how this writer, who has been dubbed a “religious writer,” deploys Christianity and its topology as a conduit for his subversion in his fiction. Partly informed by Stephen Greenblatt's seminal essay “Invisible Bullets” and its conception of containment and subversion, the article examines how Ngũgĩ uses Christianity and its topology to advance his literary and rhetorical agenda of exposing and questioning colonial and neo-colonial social injustices, hence turning such imagery and topology into powerful literary and rhetorical tools that embody the subversion of his works. Although colonialism and its link to the spread of Christianity has been exploited by many African writers in dialogical and syncretic ways characterised by subtle shades of meaning and expressions, Ngũgĩ has gone a step further to deploy to his aesthetic and rhetorical advantage the same Christianity that he attacks so fiercely. The paper also examines how the purpose and degree to which Ngũgĩ deploys Christianity as a constant subject and conduit of his subversive writing varies from his apprentice novels to his hard-hitting and ideologically astute and conscious novels. It contends that Ngũgĩ's subversion lies in both the implicit and explicit use of Christian imagery and typology as a conduit for conveying subversive messages that denounce manifestations of exploitation found in his native Kenya, in particular, and other African nation-states in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to bring together various strands vital in the study and teaching of Anglophone African literature in an increasingly globalised world, which no longer has the luxury of ignoring the rich literatures from this unique continent often given an unwarranted bad name. It looks beyond the literary-linguistic conundrum to examine how the most can come out of the interpretation and teaching of Anglophone African literatures, primarily drawing on examples from Chinua Achebe's oeuvre. It primarily argues that the increasingly transnational world has heightened the need to study and teach literatures from traditionally non-English contexts in the language, English, that has become a global language--controversies aside--to foster transnational discourse. It also illuminates on intricate issues pertaining to the study and teaching of Anglophone African literatures outside local particularities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the intricacies of using English in a traditionally non-English context such as Somalia through the work of its foremost anglophone writer, Nuruddin Farah. Farah uses English to re-imagine the nation and promote intra-, pan- and transnational discourses within and outside Africa. The analysis of Farah has been informed by the articulations of Ernest Renan, Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson, within the view of Somalia's now-contested exceptionalism. In Farah's hands, English becomes a vehicle for bringing together diverse linguistic, literary, cultural and religious expressions into a genre that facilitates transnational discourse. The paper argues that the anglophone African literary tradition that Farah embraces gains the capacity to transcend national boundaries and broadens – rather than limits – the scope and coverage of national and transnational literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]