Abstract

Literature overtime has always served the purpose of projecting the political realities of societies around the world. The African writer has been very much influenced by politics because the African intellectual is a part of the political elite. Thus, African literature has tended to reflect the political phases of the continent. This study therefore examines politics in contemporary Nigerian novel with particular reference to Wale Okediran‟sTenants of the House and Richard Ali‟s City of Memories. It establishes the relationship between politics and literature by exploring how writers satirise the country or the political system/activities of the political class. It further projects how Nigerian politics has become a cesspool of corruption especially because politicians are motivated by the desire to get rich to the detriment of their followers. It also establishes politics as a never ending quest and a theme that runs through almost every literary work. In projecting the political issues that parade the Nigerian society, the study adopts Social Realism as a tool for its analysis. It investigates how the selected texts replicate the Nigerian political reality, an objective reality that projects everyday lived activity, a faithful representation or evaluation of life which is concealed in reality, and also showing the relationship between art and life in an aesthetic mode. The study like every post-colonial political discourse looks at how politics at the governmental level is played, with the thematic occupation of the two text understudy to show the daily activities of the political class from an insider perspective by portraying a true to life representation of events from a realist perspective to satirise the political elite and their activities in the struggle for power and to validate the potency of money and power in the Nigerian politics which later results to the loss of focus in governance and the effect of democracy and multi-party system in the country.

 CHAPTER ONE

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