Book excerpt: The Changing Face of African Literature combines both the large picture – a synopsis of current trends in African literature – and the small: studies of individual texts and of themes across several texts. The large and the small are linked by recurring themes, such as gender and sexuality, the nation-state and its collapse, AIDS, war, and suffering. The volume is comparative, bringing together literature in at least five languages and from at least ten national literatures. Such a large, comparative frame is implied by most discussion of African literature but is too seldom seen. At the same time, the collection also problematizes the comparison: the goal is to make clear what African literatures have in common but also where they diverge. What difference do distinct literary traditions, readerships, and publishing patterns make to literatures which share a common thematic and so many of the same questions and needs? By juxtaposing contemporary texts form several traditions, the intention of this collection is to bring out the themes that are currently dominant in African literatures generally. After a preface by Liz Gunner and a wide-ranging introduction by the editors, the collection presents keynote essays on new paradigms in African literature, before treating specific themes – recent crime fiction, the Afrikaans and anglophone novel, feminist literature, ‘migritude’ – and studies of recent works by individual authors such as André Brink, Henri Djombo, Pie Tshibanda, Bessora, Nadine Gordimer, and Paulina Chiziane, as well as the South African television series Yizo Yizo.