Although the history of non-native creative writing in English
goes back almost two centuries, quantitative — and, more important,
qualitative — strides in such non-native English literatures (NNELs,
hereafter) are a phenomenon of the last four or five decades. In India,
literature in English by Indians may be said to have come of age in,
the late 1930s, with the publication of novels by Mulk Raj Anand
(Untouchable, 1935), Raja Rao (Kanthapura, 1938), and R. K. Narayan (The Bachelor of Arts, 1937). In West Africa, similar development has been even more recent, a product of the late 1950s and
1960s (Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, 1958; Cyprian Ekwensi,
Jagua Nona, 1961; Gabriel Okara, The Voice, 1964; Wole Soyinka,
The Interpreters, 1965, and A Dance of the Forests, 1960). The same
is true of East Africa as well (WaThiong'o Ngugi, Weep Not Child,
1964).
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