Doug Killam and Ruth Rowe, eds.
The Companion to African Literatures
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Pp. 322. $49.95
Reviewed by John C. Eustace

Several months back, a former student from my African literature course popped into my office to ask a question. He was preparing for a trip to Gambia, and he wanted to know which writers he should read before going. I admitted that I didn't know any Gambian writers, but I thought that we could quickly find some using the resources in my personal library, the university library, or the World Wide Web. The process wasn't nearly as quick as I had hoped it would be, however. We ultimately relied on another faculty member who had visited Gambia. Several weeks later I received a copy of The Companion to review, and I found the names of two Gambian writers in less than a minute. It took me little time to conclude that The Companion might be a useful reference book for anyone specializing in African literatures. Further reading, however, has convinced me that it is indispensable.

The structure of The Companion makes for quick searches. Contributions from over 150 prominent writers and critics are listed alphabetically in fonts that allow readers to distinguish at a glance between bibliographical, biographical, and thematic articles; and cross-references are indicated by asterisks. In lieu of a general index at the end of the book, the editors include three guides at the book's beginning and end: a Reader's Guide, a Country-Author Guide, and a Theme-Topic Guide. While a general index might have been useful, it seems appropriate to leave it out of a reference book, given the alphabetical organization. And as for the redundancy of the bookend guides - though I remain unconvinced of the necessity of two Reader's Guides - I did find myself making use of both Country-Author and Theme-Topic Guides, flipping to whichever was closest, and ultimately coming to the conclusion that more companions should be structured thus. The Companion does have two unrelated structural weaknesses, however, one insignificant, one significant. The insignificant weakness, depending on one's eyesight, is the small font, characteristic of all companions of literature I have read. Like its precursors, this book should be read in good light. The significant structural weakness is the short bibliography, called Suggested Further Reading, that follows the final entry. A more developed list - one containing more than one title from before 1980 - would have made this companion much more useful.

Fortunately, the Suggested Further Reading list is uncharacteristic of The Companion as a whole, for almost all of the entries themselves are useful, and quite a few are very engaging. They range from paragraph-length bibliographical descriptions to entries spanning up to eleven densely packed pages treating themes such as "Religion and Literature." While quite a few of the brief bibliographical entries are mere summaries, many go beyond summary to verge on critical assessment. They occasionally contextualize individual works in the author's corpus and reflect on issues of critical reception. The close to 350 biographical entries of various length provide useful critical insights, often highlighting for readers the most important works in the author's corpus and, again, dealing with issues of critical reception. Though bibliography and biography comprise the majority of its entries, The Companion is at its best and its most developed in its theme and special topic entries. A very brief sampling of the fifty-nine topics considered, many in substantial articles, should give readers some notion of the book's usefulness: "African-British Literature," "Black Atlantic," "Censorship," "Gay and Lesbian Sexuality in Literature," "Gikuyu Literature," "Literary Theory," "Oral Tradition and Folklore," "Prison Literature," and "Short Story." Many of these entries are further subdivided by region, an acknowledgement of the diversity of experience across the continent. Quite a few contained answers to questions I had been asking myself for a good while. For instance, the two entries on the publishing industry, "African Writers Series" and "Publishing in Sub-Saharan Africa," provided me with a good general history of major publishers of African literatures in English, going beyond the obvious platitudes to give me insight into the particular struggles faced by African publishers, writers, and readers in depressed economies.

Killam and Rowe, along with consultant editor Bernth Lindfors and associate editors Gerald M. Moser and Alain Ricard, have made the task of specializing in African literatures considerably less daunting through The Companion. And they have done so in a companion that is, at times, surprisingly compelling. It is not often that one can read such a book experiencing something akin to pleasure.