DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2020.v08i03.001

Pages: 89-130

This study carried out an analysis of Postcolonial Urban Fiction and its depiction of the theme of disillusionment. Urban Fiction from Africa, especially literature from the East African country, Tanzania, has relatively been less explored by literary researchers. One major thematic concern of postcolonial African writers, on which this study was centered, is disillusionment of the urban underclass. Two of Ben Mtobwa’s urban novels Give me Money and Dar es-Salaam by Night were used to investigate why disillusionment is a pre-dominant thematic preoccupation of postcolonial urban fiction; the interplay between post-colonial disillusionment and socio-economic as well as political factors surrounding the lives of urbanites; and ways in which disillusionment shapes the urban fiction of the author. The study’s central intent was to assess how far the theme of disillusionment pervades post-colonial urban fiction and contributes further in shaping urban life in post-colonial Tanzania as reflected in the texts under study. The study draws upon the argument that post-colonial experiences, as portrayed in the texts, for the most part, result in disillusionment-which in turn becomes highly responsible for the attitudes, consciousness and actions of the urban majority. The choice of the texts was guided by the fact that they quite complement each other in addressing the issue under study. Two literary theories- the Sociological Theory of Literature and the Post-colonial Literary Theory were used in the study. The study employed the qualitative approach which involved a textual analysis of the two novels as well as library research. Data collection mainly involved library research and analyses of both primary and secondary sources. These included the two texts-Give me Money and Dar es-Salaam by Night as well as other primary sources and secondary sources including literary texts, dissertations, theses, projects, journals and books, both print and online. The data collected.......