Abstract
The epistolary mode plays a considerable role in twenty-first century Nigerian fiction, as Nigerian writers often depict the practice of writing letters in their fiction and incorporate the letter’s generic properties into their narrative prose. This chapter explores Nigerian epistolary fiction and particularly focuses on two major narrative functions letters have in this literature. Analysing the use of the epistolary mode in Ike Oguine’s novel A Squatter’s Tale (2000), Sefi Atta’s short story “News from Home” (2010), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story “The Thing Around Your Neck” (2009) and Adichie’s novel Americanah (2013), the chapter will first discuss the way experiences of diaspora are narrativized in this literature. These examples show that letters often also indicate the extent to which a character is still attached to their homeland. Secondly, letters in Sefi Atta’s short story “Yahoo Yahoo” (2010) and in Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s novel I Do Not Come To You By Chance (2009) allow for an intricate examination of the practice of advance fee fraud (commonly referred to as 419) as well as the sociocultural context that forces people into 419.
