The Criticism of African Fiction: Its Nature and Function

The need for criticism is now generally accepted, even though a minority still hold the view that hostile critics breathing down the necks of writers as they write, will stifle the creative impulse and sound the death knell of the new literature. Literature can only flourish in an atmosphere where writers are exposed to intelligent objective criticism of dieir work. With the proliferation of African fiction twenty-five years after the publication of the first novels worth the name, the need for the imposition of standards and the encouragement of discrimination in readers is as urgent as ever.