A Postcolonial Ecocritical Reading

This book explores environmental devastation in Africa as presented in the works of Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller (2005) and Helon Habila's Oil on Water (2010). It also investigates how these novels portray the economic activities introduced by colonialism and how they negatively affect the achievement of sustainable development in both South Africa and Nigeria. The book employs a postcolonial ecocritical approach that examines the relationship between post-colonial land and humans and how, together, they form the environment. Therefore, the book analyzes the events and characters associated with environmental problems in the two narratives, to critique the hegemony of the Western development discourse and to reveal its contradictions. The narrative highlights the ecological crisis by drawing attention to how uneven development impacts people, flora, and fauna. This book contributes to the ongoing scholarly discussions that focus on the development discourse produced by the neocolonial ideology and questions its viability to sustainable wellbeing of postcolonial communities and lands.