Summary

This study presents a break with previous literary criticism that has vilified orality, in an effort to understand the interface between orality and the black Zimbabwean novel. It traces the ways in which the African oral story-telling tradition has survived within the black Zimbabwean novel in English. The author critically analyses the works of eight leading Zimbabwean creative writers, revealing how they have used oral story-telling traditions in their literature. He argues that throughout the colonisation, liberation and post- independence periods, African orature was and remains a mode of expressing resistance to authoritarian ideas and cultural dominance, and a social vision.