A Critical Analysis of Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel: A Postcolonial Perspective

10 Pages Posted: 13 Oct 2020

See all articles by Isyaku Hassan

Isyaku Hassan

Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin

Date Written: August 24, 2020

Abstract

In essence, this paper seeks to read Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel more as the material product of the postcolonial period and a particular cultural context. Thus, the paper adopts the postcolonial theory through which African writers such as Habila strive to question the postcolonial realities in African societies. This style of African writing is called “new realism, apparently, in recognition of a wave of the verisimilar portrayal of poverty, disillusionment, misgovernance, and political ineptitude in African literature, within the context of a postcolonial Africa. The paper concludes that although Africans rejoice their newly-won independence from the colonizer, still they experience a new sort of misfortune and adversity, a form of reality following colonialism, in the hands of African leaders. This novel Waiting for an Angel illustrates the concrete repulsions of postcolonial Nigeria in a substandard sketch of the daily realities. The disgraceful and desperate image represented in the text indicates the depressed human spirit wanting and expecting an angel of freedom.

Keywords: Postcolonialism, African writers, disillusionment, Angel of freedom

Suggested Citation

Hassan, Isyaku, A Critical Analysis of Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel: A Postcolonial Perspective (August 24, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3680017 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3680017

Isyaku Hassan (Contact Author)

Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin ( email )

Faculty of Languages and Communication
Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin
Kuala Nerus, TN Terengganu 21300
Malaysia

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