The evolution of African pulp fiction
Sean O'Toole traces the genre from its current incarnation back to the golden age of the genre amid high apartheid and African independence.
The last hours of Muammar Gaddafi’s life were ingloriously spent hiding in a drainage ditch on the outskirts of his hometown of Sirte. What did the former Libyan leader do and think as he unsuspectingly awaited his executioners in that makeshift bunker? It is an ample scenario for fiction writers.
In the imagination of young Nigerian author Iheoma Nwachukwu, writing in issue 12 of Jungle Jim, an irreverent monthly showcase of new African pulp fiction, the brotherly leader had sex with a bodyguard, a woman named Hana — “a quick one before her shift ends”.
Published in May, a year after Jungle Jim launched in Cape Town, Nwachukwu’s contribution is a lurid piece of agitprop that melds authorial conjecture with historical fact. Presented in the form of a taped soliloquy, Escape to Hell portrays Gaddafi in an introspective mood.
