Introduction to Fiction

What is fiction?  What is a story or a narrative? What really is the use of stories or novels in today’s difficult world? Who are the great novelists, and what did they write to improve the world? Who was Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe and Flora Nwapa? Who was Flaubert, Lewis Carrol, Leo Tolstoy and Ben Okri? These and a host of other questions have been answered in this introductory book which richly provides definitions, narrative elements and theories which should be an essential part of a course on fiction. Written in a lucid language, meant to be accessible to the undergraduate, the book also sets out several self assessment and assignment questions and  synopsis of major novels as well as write ups of such basic concepts of “plot”, “themes” “narrative structure”, and point of view. The world’s greatest and best novels are not from Africa, but from England, France, Russia, and America.  These foreign novels treated very well in this book provides a good  background  for  the  comparative study and understanding of  modern  African  Novels  inspired  by  them.