F.Abiola Irele is one of Africa's leading scholars and an authority on the anglophone and francophone traditions of post-colonial African literature. This collection of Irele's essays examines African literary traditions in the broad sense, and places the work of individual authors in context. In the African Imagination, Irele presents probing critical readings of the works of Chinua Achebe, Kamau Braithwaite, Amadou Hapae Ba, and Amadou Kourouma, among others. In addition to discussing the textual and theortical topics surrounding the texts that have become African writing in the global literary marketplace and the relationship between African intellectuals and the West.