African renaissance

The new African writer is in many ways better placed to understand and represent Africa than his predecessor. The new African writer is part of the new, powerless middle class; he has no privileges; often the best job he can hope for is as a teacher or a journalist. He is also luckier than his predecessors because he has an emerging indigenous educated audience to address. Ben Okri's novels are good examples of this emerging African novel. The work of the Ugandan, Moses Isegewa, is another. His Abyssinian Chronicles (2000) is not a beautiful novel, but it is an honest one, about being young in a country that has been destroyed by politicians and western hypocrisy and senseless tribal violence and disease and poverty.