In this course we will read fictional works by pioneers of postcolonial fiction in Africa. At the height of its power and reach at the end of the nineteenth century, the British Empire comprised some 372 million people spread over 11 million square miles. One hundred years later, the scope of Britain’s commonwealth and colonial power has been drastically reduced, but the impact of colonization on nations, peoples and cultures around the globe has been profound and irreversible. We will begin with Chinua Achebe’s great novel Things Fall Apart (1957), which tells the story of the tragic impact of British Colonial rule on the traditional society of the Igbo people in Southeast Nigeria. Achebe, son of a Christian missionary, chose to tell the story of the Igbo people in response to the negative images promulgated by the British literary tradition in which he was educated. In 1974 Buchi Emecheta brought that story forward in history, from the early 20th century to Nigerian independence in 1960; her novel The Joys of Motherhood focuses on the lives of Igbo women in both traditional and colonial worlds. The course will place these novels in the wider context of postcolonial literature with common concerns such as language, education, religion, migration, and the displacement caused by rapid economic and cultural change.