Decolonizing Christianities in Contemporary Nigerian Literature

Adriaan van Klinken addresses this literary shift in the context of Nigeria, a major center of literary production and Christian growth on the continent. Through close dialogue with works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Okey Ndibe, Chinelo Okparanta, and others, van Klinken probes the lived and imagined experiences of Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism across Nigeria in the wake of decolonization. Taking Nigerian literary writers seriously as social and religious thinkers, van Klinken puts their novels into conversation with the works of major African theologians, philosophers, and social theorists. By foregrounding the creative theologizing that fiction writing participates in, this book demonstrates how these literary texts—beyond merely representing and critiquing sociopolitical realities—also take part in envisioning the alternative worldmaking potential of Christian traditions in the Nigerian context.

Adriaan van Klinken is Professor of Religion and African Studies at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism, and Arts of Resistance in Africa and Transforming Masculinities in African Christianity: Gender Controversies in Times of AIDS, the former also published by Penn State University Press.

Literary Studies

Religious Studies & Religion

           African Religions

           Comparative Religions

           Religion

Africana Studies