Beyond the Afropolitan Postnation: The Contemporaneity of Jennifer Makumbi’s Kintu

For several decades, literature produced by Africans has been read as postcolonial and nationalist. The study of the impact of colonialism on the colonized permeated African literary criticism from the 1960s. With the attainment of independence for many African countries, the lens changed to the search for the nationalist interests of the writers in their works. Newer African literary criticism contends that contemporary African writing eludes these two approaches. Helon Habila describes contemporary African writers as postnationalist. This article engages with the content of the postnation and finds that it is currently dominated by a bias for the Afropolitan. The article questions the inclusiveness of Afropolitan postnationalism through a reading of Jennifer Makumbi’s Kintu and argues for a more inclusive, contemporaneous postnationalism.