This history offers new perspectives on African and Caribbean literature. It provides the general coverage and specific information expected of a major history. Chapters address the literature itself, the practices and conditions of its composition, and its complex relationship with African social and geopolitical history. The book provides an account of the entire body of productions that can be considered to comprise the field of African literature, defined both by imaginative expression in Africa itself and the black diaspora. The book accounts for the specific historical and cultural context in which this expression has been manifested in African and the Caribbean: the formal particularities of the literary corpus, both oral and written, that can be ascribed to the two areas, and the diversity of material and texts covered by the representative works. This magisterial history of African literature is an essential resource for specialists and students.