endowment, these writers are obligated to articulate the burdens of their contemporary
psycho-social circumstances among which is exile. They all have not however
experienced exile the same way; neither have they all responded to it in the same way.
This in itself makes the study all the more exciting and intriguing at the same time.
Nevertheless, the works are united by how across different regions the writers have been
able to explore those factors and conditions, both internal and external, which have
induced the experience of exile in Africans especially in the past two to three decades.
As well as the above, the analysis of the texts will be illuminated by the application of
postcolonial theory with specific reference to exile. In order to adequately account for
this, Chapter One engages with questions that pertain to theory and the relevance of
postcolonial theory to the concept of exile as a central idea in this research. In view of the
mobility of the concept and its constant transmutation into other related concepts, the
chapter explores the extent to which these other related concepts such as diaspora,
nomadism, transnationalism, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, globalization, etc. are
relevant in the discussion of the texts under study. It thus implies that the application of
the concepts to the texts must be read in qualified terms; not least because in spite of the
highpoints of these concepts and the ideals they espouse, so much more is needed at the
level of practice to live up to their projections. That much is detracted from their practice
as demonstrated in the lived experiences of exiles and migrants warrants the kind of
careful application that has been adopted in this research. Overall, therefore, their values
and limitations are explored and illustrated against the backdrop of the texts under study.
Chapter Two, by concentrating on Anyidoho’s EarthChild and Oguibe’s A Gathering
Fear , explores the roles of various military interventions in the shaping of the post-
colonial West African polity and social evolution. It thus establishes military adventurism
as a veritable social imaginary against which the reality of exile can be read in the two
collections. The historical epoch constituted by military rule in the sub-region looks back
specifically to 1970s and 80s. The chapter explores the representation of home under
military leadership together with its trappings of neocolonialism and how the aggregation