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BEGINNING OF THE NOVEL IN AFRICA
2:
PAMPHLETEERING
General Overview
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet (that is, without a hard cover or binding). It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths (called a leaflet), or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and stapled at the
crease to make a simple book.
In order to count as a pamphlet, UNESCO requires a publication (other than a periodical) to have 'at least 5 but not more than 48 pages exclusive of the cover pages'; a
longer item is a book. Pamphlets can contain anything from information
on kitchen appliances to medical information and religious treatises.
Pamphlets are very important in marketing as they are cheap to produce
and can be distributed easily to customers.
Pamphlets have also long been an important tool of political protest and
political campaigning for similar reasons. The storage of individual pamphlets requires special consideration because they can be easily crushed or torn when shelved alongside hardcover books. For this reason, they should either be kept in file folders in a file cabinet, or kept in boxes that have approximately the dimensions of a hardcover book and placed vertically on a shelf.
The word pamphlet means a small work issued by itself without covers.
Pamphlet coined from ‘Pamphilus’ was derived from Greek, meaning "loved by all". It has the modern connotation of a tract concerning a contemporary issue. By the end of the seventeenth century the most effective means of persuasion and communication in the world was the
pamphlet, which created influential moral and political communities of readers, and thus formed a ‘public sphere’ of popular, political opinion.
In Africa, pamphlets were used for political campaigns and as guides. In
Nigeria, the use of pamphlets was popularized through the consistent use
of it by market traders. The most popular are the Onitsha and Kano Market Literature which flourished so much before the emergence of real literatures. They were pamphlets dealing with various issues: some literary, some political, some religious and some pedagogical. Some of them are used as satiric attack on the frailties of man in his society. It is interesting to note however, that People of the City regarded as the first African novel per se published in 1945 was written by one of the Onitsha Market pamphleteers called Cyprian Ekwensi.
Transition from Pamphlets into Novels
The first book in the Onitsha market literature series was published in 1947. This was quickly followed by other titles some of which were so slim that they numbered less than 20 pages each. In a relatively short time, these chapbooks and novelettes became popular in Eastern Nigeria especially among secondary school boys and girls and among thousands of traders in Onitsha market. From the Eastern Region the popularity spread to the Cameroon, Ghana and other West African countries. The 5-year period, 1958 to 1962 may be described as the heyday when the total number of books published each year was near the 50 titles mark.
The language used in the books was suitable for most of the people in the society because not many of them were educated to primary and secondary school levels. By the time the Biafran war ended in January 1970, the publication and selling of the Onitsha market pamphlets and chapbooks was dying a natural death.
The same period in history also marked the transition from writing novelettes with semi-literate population in mind to writing serious tradebooks, both fiction and non-fiction, for highly educated people. By general trade books we mean those books written for the general public, mainly the adult population, and published by a commercial publisher.
Such books are written for the non-specialist reading public, such as
biography, novels, literature, belles letters, etc. Incidentally, these are the kind of books which people usually buy for their intrinsic merits, and they read them for their own sake.
Despite the popularity which the Onitsha market literature enjoyed for
nearly a generation, by the year 1975, that literary phenomenon had ceased to exist. To many people, especially those who enjoyed comfortable living as a result of this special book trade, the demise came rather too quickly and too unexpectedly. Why was this the case? One obvious answer is that the Biafran war of July 1967 to January 1970 had
abruptly halted the progress of the pamphlet business. At the end of the
war, when people came back to Onitsha, what they saw was a city which had been systematically destroyed. It was like a ghost town. There was little or nothing left for them to use in starting a new life. This state of affairs led to frustration, hopelessness and despair. People even turned round and started blaming their fellow Onitsha inhabitants for being the
cause of their woes. The spirit of comradeship, for which the inhabitants
of Onitsha were known, had gone. People did not trust one another any more. Rather they started being cagey and secretive. The informality and the openness of life in the Onitsha market had gone. People were no longer prepared to tell their fellow traders the truth.
However, there were people who loved the Onitsha market literature so much that they were determined to reactivate their business. Before long, they discovered that they were facing many odds. Their printing presses and other production equipment had either been stolen or destroyed beyond repair. Buying new machines would obviously cost them more money. Moreover, the resumption of the production of new
pamphlets was capital-intensive. The cover price for each new title produced would be increased considerably. Some of the well-known pamphlet authors had disappeared from Onitsha, and some even lost their lives. Obiechina stated clearly that one of the famous pamphlet
authors, Chike Okonyia, the author of Tragic, Niger Tales was killed during the war.
The whole fabric of society and the special characteristics which
distinguished Onitsha from other cities in Igboland had gone. Thousands of people decided to leave Onitsha for good and set up new lines of business in other cities like Enugu, Aba and Port Harcourt. Before the war, some traders were prepared to buy every new pamphlet title
published. After the war, the same traders decided not to purchase the
publications any more, partly because they had no money, and partly because the new retail prices were too high for them. Few years after the war, even those who thrived on the pamphleteering business had no alternative than to give up the trade. Consequently, it can be said that by the year 1975, the Onitsha market literature had ceased to exist. The people of Eastern Nigeria had to look elsewhere for their reading materials. The disappearance of this literary genre was a loss not only to the Igbos and to Eastern Nigerians but also to the whole of Nigeria and to some West Africans. The Biafran war had changed the philosophy of life of the Igbo people of Nigeria.
Between 1950 and 1970, a period of 20 years, some classic novels written by Nigerian authors were published. The same period coincided with the time when the Onitsha market literature was in vogue from 1947 to 1975. Some of these novels were The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola (1952); People of the City, by Cyprian Ekwensi (1954);
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe (1958), and One Man One Wife by Timothy Aluko (1959). These represent what Oyekan Owomoyela called the First Wave Writers of West Africa. Their works also represent a transitional period from the novelettes and chapbooks of the Onitsha market literature, to serious fiction written by intellectual authors. One Nigerian novelist who may be said to have spearheaded the transition was C.O.D. Ekwensi. He wrote for the Onitsha market literature as well as serious novels for the more sophisticated readers. As Obiechina has rightly observed, both the pamphlet writers and the intellectual West African writers used their writing as media to provide insights into the contemporary West African life. The pamphlet writers concerned
themselves with surface appearances, while the intellectual writers tried to dig deep into underlying causes and explanations.
We have already seen how serious fiction was being published almost side by side with the pamphlets of the Onitsha market literature. Those novels were written by first wave intellectual writers from Nigeria. During the Second wave, we had Wole Soyinka’s novel The Interpreters
(1965) and Gabriel Okara’s novel, The Voice (1964). It was during the Second Wave that Chinua Achebe published his two next novels – No Longer at Ease (1960) and A Man of the People, (1966). Elechi Amadi’s book, The Concubine, was published in 1966. Achebe’s A Man of the People dealt with corruption, and ended with violence and a coup.
It was during this Second Wave that some of the novels of the pioneer
Igbo women writers were published. The first was Efuru, by Flora Nwapa (1966), and Idu (1969). The other female novelist, Buchi Emecheta, published her autobiographical novels, In the Ditch (1972) and Second Class Citizen, (1974).
The writers of the Third Wave were young people writing for an African
audience and not for the Euro-Americans as was the case with the first Wave authors. These new Third Wave authors sought not only to entertain like the Onitsha chapbooks, but also to edify and instruct, as well as to forge a common cause with ordinary people. Some of the
novels of the Third Wave are One is Enough, by Flora Nwapa (1981); Kalu Okpi’s The Smugglers (1978) and On the Road (1980).