Treading Water: Ecological Concerns in Chris Abani’s GraceLand, K Sello Duiker’s
Thirteen Cents, and Helon Habila’s Oil on Water
ABSTRACT
Through readings of three African novels, this paper focuses on the tenuous connection
between human being and environment. In GraceLand, Thirteen Cents, and Oil on Water, the
protagonists’ lives are intimately shaped by their environmental surroundings. The urban
geography of a water-locked Lagos is home to Chris Abani’s impoverished teenager Elvis,
whose very existence is a precarious one. K. Sello Duiker’s street child Azure, who wanders
the city of Cape Town, lives closely connected to the ocean and other elements, while
Habila’s journalist narrator Rufus, goes on a river quest in the Niger Delta. By means of a
comparative analysis that draws examples from the three texts, this paper considers both the
literal and figurative use of water in the novels, and its significance with regard to individual
choices made in the face of an uncertain future. My partly psychoanalytical reading of Abani
and Duiker’s texts sees water not only as a symbol of purification but also a symbol of
stagnancy and decay. This interpretation is then juxtaposed with an eco-critical reading of
Helon Habila’s Oil on Water, which highlights environmental degradation in the Niger Delta.
Examples from the texts will further show a concern with human greed, violence, and
corruption and the resultant effects on the environment as the protagonists face various
choices in order to save themselves (or indeed others) from drowning in a sickly society. I
argue that the authors of these novels could be considered literary activists as they raise
ecological concerns that nudge the reader to consider various ways that choices can be made
either to simply ‘tread water’ or to flow toward creating a more habitable space in relation to
the natural environment.
Carol Leff – Abstract