Summary
Harrow's provocative book introduces a psychoanalytic dimension to the study of African women's writing. In so doing, he opens up relatively uncharted terrain in African literary studies. Comprehensive, nuanced, occasionally lyrical, the book covers an impressive range of hitherto neglected francophone novels that are examined alongside canonical anglophone texts. The author places these texts in their colonial and postcolonial contexts, developing upon, and linking, structuralist theories of colonialism and patriarchy. This study offers a radical new position for those scholars who have long sought alternatives to the liberal humanist bias pervading many studies of African women's writing.
Students often struggle with the models employed by feminist and postcolonial theorists such as Judith Butler and Homi Bhabha. The clarity with which Harrow explains the positions of such theorists makes his book an essential companion to, and commentary upon, their publications. Kenneth Harrow's study will be of interest not only to African literature specialists, but also to non-literary scholars concerned with questions about feminism, gender construction, colonialism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial theory.
