SOURCE: Gohrbandt, Detlev. “Fable Traditions in the Stories of Doris Lessing and Bessie Head.” In Across the Lines: Intertextuality and Transcultural Communication in the New Literatures in English, edited by Wolfgang Klooss, pp. 129-40. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.

In the following essay, Gohrbandt compares the use of fable elements in the African stories of Lessing and Bessie Head.

1 the Problem of Comparability

The art of narrative in Africa is fed from so many sources that it is extremely difficult to gain a sense of what is characteristic and particular about it. Take two novelists, Bessie Head and Doris Lessing, say—what does it mean to compare them, and to compare them as African writers? What exactly is one comparing? Ethnic or regional influences? Themes? Style and genre? Politics? Coloured the one and white the other, both of them are writers of fiction, non-fiction, historico-political semi-fiction, and autobiography. Women and expatriates...