Paper long abstract:

Since its launch in 1962, the African Writers Series (AWS) has enabled the dissemination of ‘African literature’ worldwide, and contributed to the creation of a critical sensitivity among readers and critics alike to its distinct qualities and values. An important amount of critical scholarship has in the meantime been produced by scholars with diverse theoretical orientations, indicating the relevance of African realities and experiences to audiences in the metropolis and elsewhere. Chinua Achebe, Aye Kwei Armah, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o among others are today recognised not only as Nigerian, Ghanaian or Kenyan writers but more significantly as postcolonial African authors whose works have had a universal appeal. Most importantly, African literature written or translated in English is appreciated as a ‘writing back’ to the empire – a counter intellectual force that serves to increase and heighten our understanding of post/colonial conditions. My paper will attempt to provide cultural and historical explanations for the role which a major British publishing company, Heinemann Educational Books, played in the emergence of an ‘African literature’ in English. In particular, it seeks to highlight the diverse responses it has evoked among critics, historians and academics which are indivisible from the ongoing debate regarding British ‘neo-colonial’ enterprise in Africa. Whereas the reluctance of British companies to publish for Africa was in a large measure determined, albeit indirectly, by contemporary colonial policies and interests, the open, wholehearted encouragement of African writings in the 1960s and 1970s suggests a radical shift in the attitudes of British publishers. This shift arguably occurred at a time when the entire publishing industry in England witnessed profound readjustment following the war years. Yet more importantly, the full-scale ‘decolonization’ process in Africa as in the rest of the empire forced British publishers such as HEB to adopt new strategies to keep their businesses going in Africa. Heinemann African Writers Series, for its part, has given new, complex cultural dimensions to the relation of England with its former African colonies.