Post-Civil War Literary Fiction: A Catalyst for Understanding Sierra Leone's Recent Past, Present, and Future

ABSTRACT: Until very recently, it seemed that a major difference between the literature of Sierra Leone and the literatures of its other West African neighbors was the absence, especially in prose fiction, of a sustained body of work by Sierra Leonean authors. This situation might seem mystifying to scholars of Sierra Leone's social and intellectual history because, after all, that country had played a major and pioneering role in the development and spreading of Western education in West Africa. This fundamental narrative of the inability of Sierra Leone's creative writers to produce high quality literature, in current times, has been seriously challenged by several new authors. This article analyzes the ways in which Sierra Leonean literature has moved from a space in which its earliest writers failed to understand fiction writing as a major outlet to express the dreams, nightmares, hopes and desires of a people to one in which high quality fiction is flourishing. It highlights how the civil war and its dreadful aftermath changed the literary landscape in Sierra Leone in many positive ways.