ADEKEYE ADEBAJO: Charles Dickens continues to inspire African writers
As we approach 210 years since the birth of British writer Charles Dickens (1812-1870) next February, it is interesting to investigate the connection between Africa and arguably the world’s greatest novelist. Several African authors have noted the influence Dickens had on their writing, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa’Thiongo and Naguib Mahfouz among them.
Es’kia Mphahlele produced a stage play of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, a revolutionary version of which was performed in black townships in the 1950s, while Ethiopia’s Sahle Sellassie Berhane Mariam translated the book into Amharic. Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel literature laureate, noted that his father had a collection of Dickens’s novels that he devoured as a child...
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