Social Contradictions and Change in Okri's <i>Dangerous Love</i>

Abstract

Ben Okri is one of Africa's most experimental contemporary novelists in the Magical realist tradition through which he has carved a nitch for himself. In this paper we critically interrogate his utilization of the magic realist form in Dangerous Love to examine the theme of contradiction and love. Through a Marxist dialectic perspective, the paper finds a parallel between the setting of the novel (Lagos City) and the wider Nigerian postcolony. Also through this materialist reading, we uncouple the post-independent realities laden in a seemingly fantastic narrative, which has extended a tradition traceable to Amos Tutuola, D.O. Faguwa and Wole Soyinka in Nigerian Literature. By applying a dialectical reading to the magical realist narrative the paper concludes that there is a thin line that separates the oddities represented in Okri's narratives and the everyday realities in the Nigerian postcolony.