Helon Habila: Narrating A Post-Colony with Its Dysfunctional Baggage

Abstract

This essay attempts a critical reading of Helon Habila’s two novels- Waiting for an Angel and Measuring Time. In these two novels, Habila narrates the history of Nigeria from the mists of antiquity through pre-colonial and colonial times to the post-colonial era. Habila, it should be noted, belongs to the third generation phase of Nigerian writing. The essay demonstrates that apparently because of the impact of the lived Nigerian history in its stark and crudest realities on Habila, he creates a novelistic tradition with the revolutionary imperative as its leit motif. However, this revolutionary fervour is short-lived in the novels under consideration. The essay argues that the two novels represent a continuation of the creative struggle by Nigerian writers to formalise the search for Nigeria’s nationhood and to demonstrate that writing is a powerful tool for collective action against social power. The paper urges Habila to sustain the revolutionary artistic narrative order which appears to be the leit motif of his narrative consciousness.

Keywords: Narration, Post-colony, Nigeria, Revolution, Poverty, Keti community.