Jeanne-Marie Jackson on The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing

A lengthy conversation with Jeanne-Marie Jackson about her new book and its creative staging of dialogue between fiction and philosophy, with particular emphasis on how that dialogue happens within the texts of contemporary anglophone African writers.Jeanne-Marie Jackson is a literary critic and scholar of world literature who teaches in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. She has published extensively on African literature, philosophy, and politics in both scholarly and popular venues. Her first book, South African Literature’s Russian Soul: Narrative Forms of Global Isolation, is a compelling comparative study, creating intellectual space within which it is possible to connect the motifs and imperatives of 19th century Russian realist literature to the literature of South Africa in the apartheid era and postcolonial moment. Her new book, which is under discussion in the conversation, was published in early 2021 with Princeton University Press and is titled The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing.

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