The Nigerian Federation in the Nigerian Novel

The Nigerian federation, as a national entity having a commonhistory, was not prominent in Nigerian novels before the civilwar. To the extent that novelists wrote of the national experience,they did so through characters belonging to a single ethnicnationality group. There were novels that depicted geographicand other links among Nigerians before and after independence,but not in the sense of the peoples being a part of a singlenation. The civil war, however, had a profound effect on thenational consciousness of Nigerians. As a result, there is moreinterest in novels having themes that treat the federal republicas a nation with shared historic experiences. At the same time,there is also interest in novels that depict common, nationwideproblems, such as urban poverty and political corruption.