Postcolonial literature, which made its strong impact on the literary
world since Edward Said‟s Orientalism (1979) has found a convenient
space in the critical analysis evaluation of African Literature because
it is the thematic superstructure of the literature of the Third World
and has come to widen the scope of analyzing the literary contribution
of the formerly colonized nations to the world of letters. In particular
it has provided the voice for these nations to express their shared
experience and re-examine their relationship with the former colonizers.
In this regard, African authors have kept the pace with the rest of the
world as they have become unfettered and free to tell their story from
their own perspective, based on the colonial experience and ironically
achieving this by exploiting the novel form, usually considered to be a
genre peculiar to the West. The selected authors for this study Ayi Kwei
Armah and Ben Okri are among those who have successfully done this and
in the process they have not only respectively re-focused attention on
the glory of pre-colonial Africa but have also sustained the tradition
of modern African writers of keeping the searchlight on the
post-independence political elite.

Also in the same tradition, the authors have made very strong social and
political messages that touch on the very lives of the millions of
Africa‟s underprivileged. Armah goes beyond the continent when his theme
is focused around race and pan-Africanism which are issues well within
the ambit of postcolonialism. In this study, the two selected novels of
Armah‟s Why Are We So Blest? (1972) and Two Thousand Seasons (1979) are
analysed against postcolonial issues of race and identity; while Okri‟s
The Famished Road (1991) and Stars of the New Curfew (1989) provide the
background against which urbanization and identity are examined. These
issues generally overlap, confirming the researcher‟s conviction that
Bhabha‟s theories on ambivalence and hybridity have become inescapable
legacies of postcolonialism.

These theories were also reference points in the analyses, in spite of
Armah‟s fierce advocacy for Pan-Africanism and what can be perceived as
this anti-racism. Okri‟s portrayal of characters and environments
confirm the rootlessness of individuals and the dilemma of urbanization.
The three stories selected from Okri‟s Stars of the New Curfew possess
those characteristics of postcolonial experience which makes them
suitable for analysis in their down - to - earthness.