Nigerian Literary Imagination and the Nationhood Project, by Toyin Falola

This book review focuses on Toyin Falola's 2022 study entitled Nigerian Literary Imagination and the Nationhood Project. The review draws attention to how Falola historicises the evolution of Nigerian literature and its representation of national realities from the 1960s to the present. As the title of his book indicates, Falola particularly explores the ideological relationship between Nigerian literature and nationalism. His central argument is that, although its ideological relevance is challenged by opposing discourses of ethnocentrism and nation-statism, literature and its imagination contribute to the invention and re-invention of Nigeria as a nation. Illustratively, in this regard, I show how Falola develops his argument in three parts and eight chapters.