National Narratives Reconciled in Contemporary Liberian Fiction

In this article I examine two contemporary novels, C. William Allen's The African Interior Mission and Boima Fahnbulleh Jr.'s Behind God's Back, in the context of postcivil war Liberian society. Both works are set during the preceding 1980 military coup and attempt to cultivate a sense of national identity through a process parallel to that of the recently concluded Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I offer two competing analyses of these narratives, suggesting that the protagonists successfully demonstrate to each other (and potential readers) that multiethnic participation in Liberian society is possible in spite of its troubled history, while also revealing the potentially intractable nature of ethnic conflict. I conclude the article with a reconciliation of these seemingly antithetical positions, that as Bildungsromane their structure and form allows readers to derive meaning from them, and a unified sense of national identity in the process, that the characters cannot fully understand.