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THIS study of oral tradition in African literature is borne from the awareness that African verbal arts still survive in works of discerning writers and in the conscious exploration of its tropes, perspectives, philosophy and consciousness, its complementary realism, and ontology, for the delineation of authentic African response to memory, history and other possible comparisons with modern existence such as witnessed in recent developments of the African novel. In this series we have strived to adopt innovative and multilayered perspectives on orality or indigeneity and its manifestations on contemporary African and new literatures. These studies use multi-faceted theories of orality which discuss and deconstruct notions of history, truth-claims and identity-making, not excluding gender and genealogy (cultural and biological) studies in African contexts.

In literature the ambiguous portraiture of female characters by some male writers and the phallic nature of men's writings have proved a matter of concern to female writers in Africa. For decades within African writing the issue of silencing was interrogated particularly as it addressed the muting and marginalisation of black women by male writers through the script of patriarchy which men follow. In this series we continue the literary and dramatic tradition of feminist concern for women's issues and we review novels, plays and poetry which demonstrate a commitment to exploring the challenges facing modern women in changing times and excerpting the issues of gender, feminism, identity, race, history, national and international politics specifically as they affect women. Female Subjectivities collectively answers the need to question and adumbrate the possibilities of literary revisions, showing what it would mean to revise even the Feminist psychoanalyst in a discourse on the subjectivity of women of colour.

Post Colonial Identities revisits issues regarding the newer literature within the expansive African heritage of diverse regional and national groupings. It is poised at substantiating the uniformity of Africa in terms of literary and cultural movements, and lending some inter-disciplinary insights on the whole body of literature through twentieth century history.

In The Oracle the author explores individual flagellations within a far wider dimension of cosmic interdependency. It also evokes Gamji motifs as the religious and political mindlessness which impoverish the African landscape. Dedicated to Chinua Achebe The Oracle honours a shamanistic teacher and story teller who, with his spiritual double helps to liberate the protagonist from an insidious mind control programme by and evil intelligence that bestrides humanity through several ages of chaos.

Riddles and Bash by novelist, poet and critic, Chin Ce, contains ten volumes of essays and book reviews published in journals of African writing in the last decade. In this second collection Ce reviews African oral traditions using the riddles and bash performances of his community as a hard, honest evaluation of modern Igbo music and culture showing how Western Christian materialism appears to have also corrupted African traditional and philosophical thoughts. The subsequent parts contain a look at new literatures and emerging tendencies in African writing, plus a chat on new Nigerian poetry and literary criticism. Ce argues that the continent is one in spite of different experiences in colonialism, nationalism and post-independent identities. And 'as we join the twenty-first century with the world becoming a global village, writers from Africa will need to preserve the heritage of their people and ensure that the healthy traditions and cultures of Africa are not lost in the march of civilisation.'

This second volume in the Critical Approached series is an exposition of the craft of Nigerian writer, theatre director, poet, dramatist and editor, Onuora Ossie Enekwe. The professor of dramatic literature spent thirty years developing and advancing the drama and graduate curriculum of the University Nsukka and had in addition been editor of Okike. An African Journal of New Writing which was founded by Chinua Achebe.

Chin Ce, one of the important voices of contemporary African writing, is author of three published works of fiction: Children of Koloko, Gamji College and The Visitor which appear together here for the first time. Children of Koloko is Chin Ce's first novel told through the eyes of young Yoyo and his friends, Buff and Dickie. The story spans the life and habits of a semi urban Nigerian town (Koloko) and her people. In the short story collection Children of Koloko Chin Ce displays his admirable craft in dialogue in his portraiture of characters who only reflect the modern sensitivities of Africa's dying values. Gamji College is Chin Ce's second published prose fiction dealing on the character of the new nation states of Africa under the various civilian and military regimes that govern them in the twenty-first century. The Visitor is a story set in the future (2040 AD) where Deego views a movie and triggers off series of experiences which draw from a history of crime and death. It features Mensa as villain and victim in a 1994 Third World country (Nigeria).

The publication of An African Eclipse in 1992 had introduced Chin Ce as a political writer of profound awareness of nation and continental history and, thenceforth, Ce's art was soon to carve its own stamp of identity by his eclectic and interdisciplinary fusion of perspectives which lend his works deeper and wider significance. This book contains scholarly chapters and reviews on the novels and works of Nigerian novelist, poet and critic Chin Ce only as a mild testimony to the wider interest and criticism which recent Nigerian writing might continue to generate among scholars of African literature throughout the world.

Opuliche is a work of biographical fiction by Igbo proverbs author and poet Pauline Kanene Davids. Davids' first novel on the life of a unique female heroine called Opuliche (Special One) is in the tradition of many Feminist writings that have challenged and upstaged myths and long held notions of female silencing or lack of relevance in a traditional African environment. Tagged 'a story of courage and triumph,' PK's novel is told in twenty two short chapters divided in two equal parts. They chronicle the birth, growth, training and education of the girl child who grew to be the first female Standard Six certificate holder, first "A" Level GCE certificate holder, and finally first undergraduate of her town - a feat of no mean proportion in the nineteen sixties and seventies of Nigerian independent nationhood. By her struggles and achievements through college, Opuliche proves the popular maxim that one's fortune can be determined by oneself alone irrespective of benign or otherwise malevolent circumstances and environments.

Bards and Tyrants is a collection of essays and book review presentations in literary journals and publisher forums within and outside Nigeria in the last decade by Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic, Chin Ce. In his preface to the volume Ce admits of the inscription of Africa "in two opposing and irremediable directions by her bards and petty tyrants." While one involves "a visionary literati that seek to elevate the potentials of their educational and cultural inheritance" the other embraces "the politics of tyrannosaurs" who hasten to drag the continent to "a state of complete and total degeneracy." For him it is the frightening prospect of this latter possibility that all partakers in contemporary African writing should and must confront. Thus from the journalistic criticism of the Nigerian state to more scholarly essays which evaluate some critical aspects and visions of African writers and critics like Achebe, Ngugi, Soyinka, Nwoga, Chinweizu, Emenyonu, Nnolim and several new poetry, prose and critical voices from around the continent, Chin Ce's arguments for new critical directions in modern African writing reveal some bold, and often sardonic, insights which press us to discern the truth of the argument and the familiarity of his proposition.