A mask dancing

Writers such as Festus Iyayi, Ben Okri and Kole Omotoso represent what has come to be known as the 'second generation' of Nigerian novelists. Emerging from the shadow of the 68-70 civil war, they were greatly influenced by the ensuing shifts in public and social life, especially the obscene levels of corruption which coincided with the country's second experiment in democracy under President Shagari. Adewale Maja-Pearce argues that the failure of Nigeria is simply and squarely the failure of the Nigerian Intelligentsia. Concentrating mainly, but not exclusively on the novels of the 1980s, he traces this failure in terms of the literature itself, which is the touchstone throughout this deliberately provocative study. 'All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form', as D.H. Lawrence put it, is eschewed in favour of the novels themselves and the extent to which they reveal that intellectual failure. A Mask Dancing is the first full-length study of Nigerian novelists that have come to prominence since the late 1970s. It presents a detailed critique of the major figures of the 'second generation', while also touching upon lesser-known writers.