Nigeria's Third Generation Writing: Historiography and Preliminary Theoretical Considerations

This special issue presents for the first time a range of sustained scholarly engagements with third generation Nigerian writing. The idea of a collaborative work of this nature on new Nigerian writing started one evening in March 1998 when we met for the first time at the Johannesburg home of the South African poet, novelist, and literary historiographer, Stephen Gray. We discovered our shared interest in the writing that was coming out of Nigeria and produced by emergent writers who had acquired a creative identity markedly different from that of second generation writers such as Niyi Osundare, Femi Osofisan, Festus Iyayi, Abubakar Gimba, Zaynab Alkali, Odia Ofeimun, Tunde Fatunde, Bode Sowande, Tanure Ojaide, and Wale Okediran.