Are there more Africans writing today, or is it that their Western audience is growing?
Habila: I think there’s a growing awareness of African writing, but the writing has always been there. It’s not as if the African novel is just being invented; Africans writers have won three Nobel prizes. But now, more than before, you have young writers publishing first and second novels who live outside Africa. So that is one reason why you find greater awareness. And there’s the Internet, so there’s more buzz around. Whereas before nobody would know about this work except for a few cognoscenti, now people talk about it. And people are more interested in other people now. What globalization has done is increase the focus on other people who before were just on the margin. People feared an American imperialism when it came to writing, but instead you find an awareness of other cultures—a kind of democratization of other cultures. Do your books have a wide audience in Nigeria? I like to think I have a big audience there, that I’m known in Nigeria. I return as often as I can. The last
