Creating an Alternate Canon: Achebe to Obioma

Abstract

Chigozie Obioma is a novelist of Nigerian origin who has published two novels so far. He has been hailed as an ‘heir to Chinua Achebe’ the master African novelist. The comparison of Obioma with Achebe is obvious because both of them belong to the same tribe, but what is more important is that Obioma seems to carry from the point where Achebe left. In his debut novel The Fishermen, Obioma foregrounds the problems that plague postcolonial Nigeria. In the novel, he confirms that whatever Achebe prophesied about the future of Nigeria has come true. Like his illustrious predecessor, he is critical of colonial institutions that have decimated the national culture of Nigeria. The paper is a study of Obioma’s novel The Fishermen.