Conceiving Neighbourhood in Northern Nigerian Fiction

Abstract

Representations of neighbourhood in contemporary Northern Nigerian fiction are a departure point for scholars exploring the structures and sources of ethnic and religious violence. Using Edify Yakusak’s After They Left and Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday, Slavoj Zizek's analysis of the concept of neighbour is applied here, to engage theoretically with Northern Nigerian social conditions. This framework illuminates the links existing between the everyday experience of neighbourhoods in real life, and their imaginative representations in the literary arts.