Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists, 1952-1966

Nanette Morton teaches English at McMaster University in Hamilton.

The delay in republishing Margaret Laurence’s only critical work
belies its importance. Long Drums and Cannons was the first book-length
study of Nigerian literature published in English. Although other
studies have since appeared, Laurence’s work is still remarkable for
both its cultural sensitivity and its prescience. Laurence’s deep
knowledge of African folklore, acquired through reading and long-term
residence in Africa, allowed her to place what she read in its cultural
context. As a writer, she recognized and lauded both the already famous
(Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, and John Pepper Clark) and those, such as
Gabriel Okara and T.M. Aluko, who would become so.

Laurence’s nonacademic approach to the studied texts is refreshingly
free of jargon. Her insights about Nigerian writers’ attempts to make
peace with the past while moving on with the present—an issue that
would later appear in her own writing—are particularly acute. Chinua
Achebe, who would become Laurence’s friend, praised her writerly
assessments of his and others’ work. This new edition of Long Drums
and Cannons includes a previously unpublished essay, “Tribalism as Us
Versus Them,” and a scholarly introduction by Nora Foster Stovel.
Fully annotated, the text also includes up-to-date bibliographies
necessary for further research.