The Responsible Critic is a critical anthology offered as a tribute to a founding father of African literary criticism, Professor Ben Obumselu. The collection of seventeen scholarly articles examines the state of literary studies in Africa (with particular emphasis on Nigeria) and covers a period spanning well over a hundred years of creative writing in Africa. Diverse in its preoccupation and critical methodology, the book primarily engages with the implication for African literature (and general cultural and intellectual life) of the contact between Africa and the West, and the paradoxes and complexities of the transition from precolonial to postcolonial praxis. It foregrounds the abiding and changing concerns of literary theory and criticism in Africa. With a foreword by Molly Mahood, a testimony of the beginning, and contributions by accomplished scholars drawn from Denmark, England, Nigeria, South Africa, the United States of America and Zambia, the book presents the work of several generations of critics of African literature. Its concerns range from nineteenth century Anglo-Nigerian poetry to the prose fiction of postapartheid South Africa, and in the process it engages with the work of most of Africa’s important writers. In this volume, David Cook, Isidore Diala, Afam Ebeogu, Michael J. C. Echeruo, F. Abiola Irele, Dan Izevbaye, Charles Lock, Chidi Maduka, Mike Marais, Bwendo Mulengala, J. O. J. Nwachukwu-Agbada, Chinyere Nwahunanya, Ben Obumselu, Sophia Ogwude, Jasper Onuekwusi, Wale Oyedele and Adebayo Williams provide compelling insights and perspectives that make The Responsible Critic an Africanist reader with the potential of making a major contribution towards the redefinition of the field.

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