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The novelist, playwright, and theorist left a blistering legacy. He was, with Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, regarded as part of an unofficial trinity: the continent’s greatest pioneering writers.

“I needed to write something that takes advantage of the rich nuances in my own culture,” said the Graywolf Press Africa Prize-winning author of The House of Rust.

The Nigerian social critic riled up online controversies through blunt, unsparing commentary on African literature, politics, and establishment culture. His style has been criticized as abrasive, dismissive, and even unfair. But, in his persistent alarm, he foresaw a moral decay.

From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Stella Nyanzi to Alain Mabanckou, Siphiwe Ndlovu, and Laila Lalami: the notable African books of 2025, guest curated by the literary culture critic Tolu Daniel.

Since the 1950s, the Nobel laureate has worked in rebellion, carving out a complex, fecund torque of an oeuvre. But as his plays of mythic vigor and Yoruba impulse revitalized Anglophone theatre, raising an art form to ritualistic heights, his force of personality kept him in the political arena, a close witness of an African affliction. Few artists have lived like him. Yet at 91, carrying the mantle of “greatest living writer,” he has one more great battle on his hands — with generations who once deified him.

He inherited the drama of the gods and became the greatest living writer. But at 91, in the long rage of Nigerian nationhood, his deep political legacy is at a crossroads.

To tell their stories, the author of Yahoo! Yahoo! imitates his characters. If he writes about scammers, he wants readers to suspect him of scamming. Why should Nigerian literature not be as relatable as its music? And why, as director of the Puebla International Literature Festival, should he not want writers to take an ethical stand?

As a salesman of youth power, Africa’s most influential millennial curator reinvented himself from new media maven to political power player, and, now, a wellness advocate. Each iteration transformed culture. One left him scarred.

As a child, no one told the writer and attorney how her family died. She has since compressed her resilience into acclaimed novels, nonfiction, poetry, and Ubwali, a magazine shaping Zambian literature.

For decades, Nigerians looked to writers for moral authority. As the country deteriorates further, and more writers become “hooker intellectuals,” the short story writer, attorney, and digital publishing pioneer hopes to maintain his courage.

The Abebi Award in Afro-Nonfiction is “not just about beautiful sentences and essays” but also “a world where girls and women are equipped and empowered.” Founder Mofiyinfoluwa O. and 2024 Award winner and runner-up Mariam Tijani and Ifeoluwa Ajike Williams reflect on courage, contemplative exploration, and catharsis.

In grave dramas of styled minimalism, the Ibadan-born director constructs harsh worlds of dangerous dreams, in which characters are caught up in greed and violence.

The late great Kenyan writer produced full-length work in all genres except poetry, capturing the tensions between colonizer and colonized, orality and literacy, and tradition and modernity.

Working from fragments, the reclusive poet led a wave of young Nigerian voices situating the self and mental states. Now his “schizo poetry” is evolving, drawing from Igbo cosmology.

As Series Editors of Global Black Writers in Translation, Vanessa K. Valdés, Anette Joseph-Gabriel, and Nathan H. Dize know that “Black literature is the least translated.” In a mostly white field, the long histories of Afro-diasporic, Caribbean, Spanish, French, and Portuguese erasures inform their work.

In an era of unearned hype, the novelistic short stories of God’s Children Are Little Broken Things established him as a major talent, earning him the Dylan Thomas Prize. But as potent as fiction is in combating queer erasure, he believes in the supplement of living openly.

While flying military helicopters, Umar Abubakar Sidi wrote the two top-selling poetry books in Nigeria. Now he has a novel. One day, he will write about military life: “It is a reality I cannot escape.”

The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl with the Louding Voice and And So I Roar on her writing process.