BOOK REVIEW: Edited by Biodun Jeyifo.Modern African Drama, Norton Critical Editions. New York: Norton, 2002.

Abstract

Known for their canon-making authority, the Norton Critical Editions series have also tended to neglect literature and especially drama outside the British and American centers. The appearance of a critical edition that is also an anthology of African drama is thus a reason for celebration. This collection offers both seasoned scholars and new students a range of plays and critical essays in one volume, which will give drama and African studies higher profiles in universities. The volume combines oft-anthologized plays like Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman and Sizwe Bansi Is Dead by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, and the less well-traveled Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels by Femi Osofisan, from the usually well-represented Nigeria and South Africa, with others less known but no less important, such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii's I Will Marry When I Want (Kenya), Ama Ata Aidoo's Dilemma of a Ghost (Ghana; the only play by a woman), and Collision of Altars by Ethiopian Tsegaye Gabre Medhin. It also includes criticism on individual plays and key theoretical essays, from writers and activists like Fanon, Soyinka, and Ngugi, and from scholars, including the anthology's editor, which place African drama in the broader postcolonial context.