EXILE AND RACISM IN THE MAJOR OF DORIS LESSING AND V.S. NAIPAUL

Abstract

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of Caribbean and African Literature. In both literatures racism and exile are inevitable themes. The two literatures are dominated by the reaction against the colonial experience. The aim of this chapter is to set out the origins and history of African and Caribbean literature.

Between the end of the Second World War and the end of the

fifties, as the continent moved toward independence, a large corpus of African novels appeared in both West and South Africa. African literature is, quite naturally, different from European literature. As Ihechukwa Madubuike, in Toward the Decolonization of African Literature, puts it: African literature is an autonomous entity separate and apart from all other literatures. It has its own traditions, models and norms. Its constituency is separate and radically different from that of the European or other literatures. And its historical and cultural imperatives impose upon it concerns and . constraints quite different, sometimes altogether antithetical to the European. These facts hold true even for those portions of African literature which continue to be written in European languages. (4).

African works of fiction reflect the political and social situations on the black continent. In their works, African novelists • examine and analyze the black experience of brutal slave trading,