The Book in Africa Critical Debates

“The book will be valuable to the fields of book history and postcolonial studies, not only because it demonstrates the need for new critical approaches to the book in Africa but also for the challenges it poses to the broader discipline of book history.” (Rachel Bower, Textual Cultures, Vol. 10 (1), 2016)

“The essays in this collection offer an illuminating glimpse of the critical debates on the Book in Africa, and will certainly create a lot of interest in this area of expertise, especially on the importance of archival sources as pivotal in literary scholarship.” (Jabulani Mkhize, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 42 (2), 2016)

“This is an important volume because it directs our attention to difficult questions, including that of the relationship between socio-historical contexts and literary production. The book will be valuable to the fields of book history and postcolonial studies, not only because it demonstrates the need for new critical approaches to the book in Africa but also for the challenges it poses to the broader discipline of book history.” (Rachel Bower, Textual Practice, Vol. 10 (1), 2016)

“The Book in Africa: Critical Debates is the third title in Palgrave Macmillan’s wide-ranging new series New Directions in Book History. In a decade when scholars have begun to look beyond the western and predominantly white print culture to push forward the former boundaries of the field, this new volume edited by Caroline Davis and David Johnson provides researchers with eleven case studies encompassing the fields of the history of the book, publishing studies, library studies, and literary history.” (Gulfer Goze, SHARP News, sharpweb.org, August, 2016)

“This volume brings valuableperspectives to understandings of ‘the book’ across Africa, presenting a diversity of linguistic and publishing contexts and genuinely innovative research. … provides a timely corrective to commonly held assumptions that Africa’s publishing future will be exclusively digital, and a sobering reminder of the need to engage at the level of the basic economic and publishing realities of both print and electronic publishing in Africa.” (Stephanie Kitchen, Logos, Vol. 27 (4), 2016)

"The Book in Africa is recommended for all African studies collections, library and information science departments, as well as collections on publishing and book studies, print culture, and book history." Hans M. Zell, The African Book Publishing Record