Trend and Style in Habila’s <i>Waiting for an Angel</i>

Abstract

The event of the mid 80’s through the 90’s in Nigeria is what Helon Habila captures in his novel Waiting for an Angel. The marriage of fiction with faction makes it a unique genre and attractive for literary scholars to explore the novel’s mechanics and techniques. Consequently, this essay attempts to unravel some of Habila’s narrative techniques in relation to his message. In doing so, we would concern ourselves with some of the obvious methods he has employed in the novel; dramatization, flashback, stories within a story etc. Though some of these techniques may not be too appealing to many due to the fact that the novel is not chronologically arranged, but that is what marks him out as Helon Habila.