Long Drums and Cannons

by Margaret Laurence

"Margaret Laurence's Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists, 1952-1966 is a fascinating study of African postcolonial writing, written by Laurence after her early years in Africa. Laurence writes that the "most enduring aspect of Nigerian literature...is the insights it gives not only into immediate and local dilemmas, but through these, into the human dilemma as a whole."". "Her comments on the early writings of well-known Nigerian authors - Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, John Pepper Clark, Amos Tutuola, and Cyprian Ekwensi - also provide insights into her early African writings and her later Canadian works. She also explores the works of then little-known authors, including Flora Nwapa, Nigeria's first woman novelist, Gabriel Okara, T. M. Aluko, Elechi Amadi, Onuora Nzekwu, and Nkem Nwankwo.". "This new edition of Long Drums and Cannons, originally published in 1968 and long out-of-print, also contains Laurence's previously unpublished essay "Tribalism As Us Versus T