Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. A source for Arrow of God -- 2. Trends in the criticism of African literature -- 3. Utopian literature and the African world view -- 4. Politics in the West African novel -- 5. The Nigerian tradition in the novel -- 6. Prolegomena to a definition of the African aesthetic in literature -- 7. A house divided: feminism in African iterature -- 8. Achebe's tragic heroes -- 9. Achebe's masked spirits: culture's hum and buzz of social implications -- 10. The critic of African literature: the challenge of the 1980s -- 11. Moral values in the Nigerian novel -- 12. the unhappy woman in Nigerian fiction: a mythic interpretation of the archetypes -- 13. The "Sons of Achebe": example of John Munonye -- 14. African feminism: the scandalous path -- 15. Contemporary Nigerian fiction -- 16. The writer as patriot -- Epilogue -- Index -- Back cover.