Ebrahim Hussein: Swahili Theatre and Individualism

A scholarly study of Ebrahim Hussein, the best-known Swahili playwright and one of Tanzania’s most complex literary figures. Primarily a dramatist, Hussein is also a theorist whose dissertation on theatre in Tanzania remains the standard reference work in the field. His plays constitute a body of theatrical material of great significance for understanding Tanzania’s political and social development in relation to the Swahili and Islamic coastal culture of which he is a part. The author, Alain Ricard, is Research Professor at the CNRS of the African Studies Centre at the University of Bordeaux. In this sympathetic study of the man and his work, Ricard addresses the long-standing neglect of Tanzanian literature in French- and English-language scholarship, and of Hussein’s work in particular. Internationally distributed by African Books Collective.