This article examines the literary representation of the ecological, economic and social destruction of the Niger Delta in Helon Habila's novel Oil on Water (2011). Although formally independent since 1960, Nigeria is still embedded in unequal neocolonial relationships under the guise of globalization. With its focus on one manifestation of neocolonialism, namely the extraction of oil, the novel can be placed in the context of petroculture, which foregrounds the global significance and impact that fossil fuels have on cultural and social imaginaries of the global North and South. Focusing on narrative perspective and structure, the article analyzes the way Oil on Water is constructed to explore the social and environmental consequences of the extraction of oil in the Niger Delta. The novel itself, highlighting as it does the role of the journalist as observer and witness, amounts to an act of literary activism, since it provides testimony concerning the destruction of the region. Helon Habila's Oil on Water (2011) powerfully and engagingly captures the ecological and social situation in the Niger Delta. The Nigerian writer's third novel traces the consequences of the "vicious ecological war" that has been waged in the region in the name of the extraction of oil, "a war whose victims are a hapless people and the land on which they have lived and thrived for centuries" (Okonta and Douglas, 2001, 63-64). On the surface, the novel appears to be a thriller revolving around a kidnapping case, but it is actually an elaborate investigation of the ways the oil production has negatively affected the region's environment and population. This article opens with a discussion of the neocolonial situation in Nigeria and places Oil on Water in the context of petroculture. Employing literary analysis and close reading, it then proceeds to analyze the way Oil on Water is constructed to explore the social and environmental consequences of the oil extraction in the Niger Delta. In contrast to previous discussions of the novel, such as those of Leerom Medovoi (2014) and Solomon Edebor (2017), the article focuses particularly on the use of narrative perspective and structure to convey the novel's thematic concerns. Oil on Water exhibits a complex narrative structure in which the journalist Rufus, the novel's protagonist and homodiegetic
Postapocalyptic narratives proliferate in contemporary fiction and cinema. A convincing and successful representative of the genre, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014) can nevertheless be distinguished from other postapocalyptic texts, such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy, and the television series The Walking Dead (2010–). The novel does not focus on survival, struggle, and conflict but rather examines the possibility and necessity of cultural expression in a postapocalyptic setting, demonstrating the importance and value of art and memory even in strained circumstances. As a result, it presents an unusually optimistic and hopeful vision of an otherwise bleak future.
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