2021 Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies honorable mention
2022 African Literature Association Book of the Year co-winner
A01=Monica Popescu
African Literature Association book award winners
Author_Monica Popescu
Category=DSBH
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MLA Book Award Winners
Product details
- ISBN 9781478009405
- Weight: 386g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 04 Sep 2020
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In At Penpoint Monica Popescu traces the development of African literature during the second half of the twentieth century to address the intertwined effects of the Cold War and decolonization on literary history. Popescu draws on archival materials from the Soviet-sponsored Afro-Asian Writers Association and the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom alongside considerations of canonical literary works by Ayi Kwei Armah, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Ousmane SembÈne, Pepetela, Nadine Gordimer, and others. She outlines how the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union played out in the aesthetic and political debates among African writers and intellectuals. These writers decolonized aesthetic canons even as superpowers attempted to shape African cultural production in ways that would advance their ideological and geopolitical goals. Placing African literature at the crossroads of postcolonial theory and studies of the Cold War, Popescu provides a new reassessment of African literature, aesthetics, and knowledge production.
Monica Popescu is Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar of African Literatures in the Department of English at McGill University. She is the author of South African Literature beyond the Cold War and The Politics of Violence in Post-communist Films.
