Who is the Father of African Literature? Essay by Ornguze Nashima Nathaniel

This essay explores the long-term controversy among readers about title of the father of African Literature, offering insights and new perspectives.

Who is the Father of African Literature?

Permit me to recount a personal past. I will come back to the question of who is the father of African literature later.

I finished writing my “debut” novel Rising in Pain circa 2015. Then in 2019, a local publisher, who had read my blogs online, got interested in my works. We got talking and he asked to read my manuscript. I took it to him in Makurdi, and he took time to pore over it. At last, he gave a prescription, which was prefaced with a question: “Have you read Things Fall Apart by Achebe? Your novel is beautiful. But you will have to go back and work on your descriptions and imagery. Make your sentences easy and simple. As a starter, it is only Achebe’s TFA that will lead you well.”

I left his office and followed his prescription with the diligence of a literary patient. It worked. The reader should know that before then, I had read Chike and the River and A Man of the People. Reading TFA really shaped me. From 2019 to 2021, I made it my catechism on “simple writing.” While I was reading and rereading TFA and other works by Achebe, especially in 2020, I was also tasting the obscure works of Soyinka. I would start but stop. I started with The Interpreters. I stopped. I tried Abiku and loved it. Then I successfully read Ake: The Years of Childhood and went back to finish The Interpreters. From there my love for higher literature ignited. I went ahead to download a good number of known difficult-to-read novels.

After diligently tasting Achebe’s and Wole’s literary dishes, I made two assertions in 2022:

1. Reading Wole Soyinka’s works—especially his fiction—is like hiking a steep, foggy mountain trail with little signposts at the start. You must trust your instincts, hold your breath, and push through the first few chapters—dense, stone-strewn, and rocky. But if you stay patient, your reward is a breathtaking view few books ever offer. Soyinka did not receive the Nobel Prize in error. The only concern readers often raise is the esoteric nature of his narratives; he doesn’t write for the market. The sweetness that lies beneath his cobbled openings is always worth the initial effort. Take a look at Ake: The Years of Childhood. The opening chapter may seem daunting, but beyond it lies immense joy. The same goes for The Interpreters, You Must Set Forth at Dawn, etc. To enjoy Wole, you must be woke and patient.

2. Achebe writes soft sentences and tells his stories in a way everyone can follow. His prose is characterised by its simplicity and clarity, allowing readers from diverse backgrounds to connect with the narrative. He masterfully blends traditional storytelling with modern literary techniques, creating an accessible and engaging style that resonates with a wide audience.

Back to the titular question. Now, I would want to ask what we actually mean by “father” when we talk about African literature. Is it based on precedence or virality of one’s work? Again, I want to ask what we mean when we talk about African literature. Do we mean African literature in indigenous languages or African literature in the English language? To call one the father of African literature (whether African literature in indigenous languages or in the English language) in jocular terms is good humour. But to repeat it nonstop and try to make it a reality is to subsume the literary world of Africa.

I would like to focus on African literature in the English language. This is because I have better chances to address the matter in contention proper when it is African literature in the English language that is tabled and dissected. I would also focus on written literature, not orature.

In 1911, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford (also known as Ekra-Agiman) of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) published what is probably the first African novel written in English, Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation. Although the work moves between fiction and political advocacy, its publication and positive reviews in the Western press mark a watershed moment in African literature. Hayford’s work has both precedence and virality. But it will be an insult to the profundity of African literature to affix the “father of African literature” on his person.

At this point, I like to hop down from the African stage to the Nigerian stage, where ethnic preference sometimes fuels an unnecessary comparison between Achebe and Wole, and where the former is often seen as the father of African literature—which ought not to be. This is not just because it is Achebe. It ought not to be, irrespective of whomever it is conferred on.

African literature as a whole, and Nigerian literature in particular, were not birthed by the presence of the colonial masters or the arrival of some African novel in the 1950s. Calling Achebe or any other person the father of African literature is akin to saying there was no African literature before Achebe or such a person put pen to paper. It may also mean that Achebe or such a person taught other Africans to write like Africans. And you can see that this is a blatant underestimation of African literary tradition. Even in Nigeria, before Things Fall Apart was written in 1958, there was The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola, which is considered to be the first Nigerian literature in the English language. The work has precedence and virality. Again, shortly after The Palm-Wine Drinkard, there was Cyprian Ekwensi’s People of the City (1954). Then Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). Then T.M. Aluko’s One Man One Wife (1959), and Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel (1959) followed. If the argument is that Achebe’s TFA taught Nigerian writers (let’s not say African writers) how to write like Africans, then who taught those who came before him with great works that lacked neither virality nor taste?

Before we answer this question, let’s also drift to the Achebe-Wole comparison. Some readers are reluctant to give balanced analyses. Preference is normal—you could prefer Achebe to Wole. No offence detected. But hanging on weak or unfounded arguments is not ideal. One such argument is the claim that Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize at a time African writers boycotted the prize. The first question is how would one boycott what has a secretive nomination process? Secondly, is the Nobel Prize an African Prize? Wole competed with world writers on a world stage, not an Afro stage, and he won. His victory was not a function of the absence or availability of other African writers. He won because he had to win.

If one should claim Wole was compensated for being Eurocentric—which is false—the question to ask is simple: Was Wole the only Eurocentric writer in Africa? The great writer won the prize in 1986 for his “wide cultural perspective and… poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence.” After Wole, other Africans went on to win the coveted prize. Should we say they won for being Eurocentric too?

Another claim is that because Wole Soyinka’s writing is difficult and obscure, he is not a good writer. This is reductive. Harold Bloom, the late American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, in his The Western Canon, posits: “I have tried to confront greatness directly: to ask what makes the author and the works canonical. The answer, more often than not, has turned out to be strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange.” He goes ahead to say: “One mark of originality that can win canonical status for a literary work is strangeness that we either never altogether assimilate, or that becomes such a given that we are blinded to its idiosyncrasies.”

Wole’s originality is in his strangeness. That is why readers unfamiliar with higher literature may find lines like: “Metal on concrete jars my drink lobes” difficult. A reader who prefers Achebe’s more straightforward style might rewrite that line as: “The sound of metal tables and chairs on the concrete floor irritates my ears.” This version is easier, but less original.

To speak against the unhelpful comparison, especially the criticism of Soyinka’s style by less-experienced readers, I would first accept that both Wole and Achebe have seats at the dais. One writes soft literature; the other, higher literature. As for readers or writers who may harshly favour one over the other, I put the blame on what Bloom calls the Anxiety of Influence, and what I call the Simlit Complex. Anxiety of Influence (what the speaking corpse of Plato would love to call mimesis) is based primarily on Bloom’s belief that there is no such thing as an original work—that every new composition is simply a misreading or misinterpretation of an earlier work and that influence is unavoidable and inescapable; almost all writers inevitably, to some degree, adopt, manipulate or alter and assimilate certain aspects of the content or subject matter, literary style or form from their predecessors. And “Simlit Complex” is the tendency to dismiss what one finds difficult to understand.

There were many Samuel Johnsons, but there was one Shakespeare. This was because Samuel Johnson, like Achebe, could be easily parodied. But Shakespeare, like Wole Soyinka, was too original and strange to be copied. Achebe is an exceptional raconteur. But Wole is a sacred gift given by the gods of higher literature, and he is the centre of the African Canon, as Shakespeare is the centre of the Western Canon.

Ornguze Nashima Nathaniel, also known as ONN, is a Nigerian writer from Benue State. He writes in his self-coined literary style called Acheyinka, which is a style that centres on the dynamic use of language, combining the clarity and accessibility of Chinua Achebe’s prose with the poetic richness, strangeness, and symbolic depth that characterise Wole Soyinka’s writing. He was the runner-up in the 2023 ANA Short Story Prize for Children’s Literature, and was shortlisted and longlisted for the DKA Short Story Prize and the Quramo Writers’ Prize, all in 2024, respectively. His works have appeared in Lounloun Journal and elsewhere. He is the author of Profiles: The People I Crossed, a compelling memoir-in-profiles published in 2025.