''Two Thousand Seasons'' is a

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

by Ghanaian

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while othe ...

Ayi Kwei Armah. The

was first published in 1973 and subsequently published a number of times, including in the influential Heinemann African Writers Series. It is an epic historical

, attempting to depict the last "two thousand seasons" of African

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

in one

narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional ( memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller Thriller may r ...

arc following a Pan-African approach.

Themes

The

focuses on the complicity of African

people A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of proper ...

in the enslavement of their

to intruders, first represented as Arabs then later as European whites. In doing so, the

emphasizes the continued complicitness of African leaders in furthering the oppression of other African peoples. For Armah, the intervention of outside cultures violates a past "African ideal ..egalitarian philosophy" which can help guide the recovery of, what critic Chinyere Nwahunanya calls a "lost African Eden".

Reception

Criticism of the

is mixed. Chinua Achebe, in a 1987 interview, described ''Two Thousand Seasons'' as "unacceptable on the basis of fact, and on the basis of art. The work is ponderous and heavy and wooden, almost embarrassing in its heaviness." The reviewing site '' Complete Review'' gave the novel a B+ rating, noting that it is an "often strong but ultimately too simplistic picture of Africa -- past and future". The review focuses on Armah's oversimplification of the African continent's "actual sad history". Gloria Steinem in a 2016 article for '' T: The New York Times Style Magazine'' chose ''Two Thousand Seasons'' as one of her 10 favourite books and said of Ayi Kwei Armah: "He not only redefines history, but how history is told.""My Bookshelf, Myself – My 10 Favorite Books: Gloria Steinem"
''T: The New York Times Style Magazine'', 22 January 2016.

Themes

Reception

References

Further reading