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Joshua I. Mokwuah: "Can Contemporary Nigerian Literature Come Forth as Prophecy?"

Joshua I. Mokwuah

Joshua I. Mokwuah is a reader of literature. He lives in Nsukka, where he’s working on his contributions to the philosophy of history. Another of his essays has appeared in African Arguments.

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September 24, 2026

Can Contemporary Nigerian Literature Come Forth as Prophecy?

Reading Chigozie Obioma, Biafra, and Igbo cosmology, a philosopher reflects on “the shrunken role of Nigerian writers today” and their “inability to perceive the shifting of the tectonic plates.” Arguing that the Achebean tradition has created novelists who “wish to be free of the responsibility of the oracle but ache to inherit that reverence,” it is a decrial of the metaphysical gap in our realist fiction, and a rallying cry for mythos and “oracular insight.”
Joshua I. Mokwuah

September 24, 2026

Can Contemporary Nigerian Literature Come Forth as Prophecy?

Reading Chigozie Obioma, Biafra, and Igbo cosmology, a philosopher reflects on “the shrunken role of Nigerian writers today” and their “inability to perceive the shifting of the tectonic plates.” Arguing that the Achebean tradition has created novelists who “wish to be free of the responsibility of the oracle but ache to inherit that reverence,” it is a decrial of the metaphysical gap in our realist fiction, and a rallying cry for mythos and “oracular insight.”
Joshua I. Mokwuah

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