{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0791462617?tag=bookfrontier-20","asin":"0791462617","authors":["Byron Caminero-Santangelo"],"book_id":"9780791462614","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/african-fiction-and-joseph-conrad-0791462617","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780791462614.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","description":"Interrogates the \"writing back to the center\" approach to intertextuality and explores alternatives to it. By exploring the relationships between African novels and Joseph Conrad's fiction, this book examines the many discontinuous functions postcolonial revisions of \"the canon\" can serve. While contemporary literary studies too often represent such revisions merely as a means for postcolonial writers to challenge a colonial worldview, Caminero-Santangelo explores how African authors engage with a wide range of historically specific ideologies generated by particular histories of national independence and the development of postcolonial nations. The shift in focus away from a single colonial moment enables Caminero-Santangelo to detect a complex interweaving of convergence and divergence between Conrad and African writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Nadine Gordimer, Tayeb Salih, and Ama Ata Aidoo, who use Conradian intertexts to intervene in repressive situations in late-twentieth-century Africa. By emphasizing the need to contextualize acts of writing and rewriting in precise historical terms, the author points to the limitations-even the dangers-of the standard cultural binary (Western-colonial/African-postcolonial) and the static dialectic of colonial domination and postcolonial resistance embraced by much recent cultural criticism.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780791462614","publication_date":"20041230","publisher":"State University of New York Press","slug":"african-fiction-and-joseph-conrad","subtitle":"Reading Postcolonial Intertextuality","title":"African Fiction and Joseph Conrad"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004010","confidence_band":"high","label":"African Lit Crit","score":0.8599,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004100","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Caribbean & Latin American Criticism","score":0.7702,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Black Lit Crit","score":0.7658,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004010","confidence_band":"high","label":"African Lit Crit","score":0.8599,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004100","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Caribbean & Latin American Criticism","score":0.7702,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Black Lit Crit","score":0.7658,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004010","confidence_band":"high","label":"African Lit Crit","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004120","confidence_band":"high","label":"British & Irish Literary Criticism","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"LIT006000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Literary Theory","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"African Lit Crit","score":0.8599,"slug":"african-lit-crit"},{"label":"Caribbean & Latin American Criticism","score":0.7702,"slug":"caribbean-latin-american-criticism"},{"label":"Black Lit Crit","score":0.7658,"slug":"black-lit-crit"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy African Lit Crit","Good for readers who enjoy African Lit Crit and Caribbean & Latin American Criticism."],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Stefan Helgesson"],"book_id":"9780415462396","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780415462396.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":9.3027,"title":"Transnationalism in Southern African Literature","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780415462396"},{"authors":["Jago Morrison"],"book_id":"9781526116796","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781526116796.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":8.8556,"title":"Chinua Achebe","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781526116796"},{"authors":["Nella Larsen"],"book_id":"9781627931243","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781627931243.jpg?v=20260417T204117Z-pairingsrefresh%3A2026-04-17T20%3A41%3A17Z","score":8.5993,"title":"Passing","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781627931243"}],"topics":[],"what_you_get":["Reading lane: African Lit Crit and Caribbean & Latin American Criticism.","Publisher: State University of New York Press."]},"llm_signals":null,"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":false,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":0,"goodreads_ratings_count":1,"goodreads_reviews_count":0,"quality_score":0.8045}}