Two Thousand Seasons

Since its very existence, postcolonial literature has challenged the Western view and its perception of the African people. Many postcolonial writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o have created a civilized Africa; an Africa that flourishes with reason, morals and logic. They presented an Africa that past European writers rejected. These postcolonial writers have made it their duty to present the African tradition in a way that suffocates their audiences with understanding and knowledge. The customs and practices of the African people are explained in great detail in their works, these authors go the extra mile when providing meaning, principles and historical relevance to many of African practices. As a result, readers of these books are drenched with logic and reason for practically each African practice they come across. But Ayi Kwei Armah, the author of Two Thousands Seasons, takes this gesture of restoring Africa and its customs to new heights; he presents a novel specifically targeted to prosecute European tradition and ideals.
Armah takes postcolonial literature to a different level when he talks about the difficult institution of slavery. Other postcolonial works slightly brush on the topic, but Armah uses slavery to challenge the ideals of the Europeans. He goes as far as challenging the practices and the intelligence of the European people. In Two Thousand Seasons, he installs an omniscient narrator in his novel; this narrator speaks on behalf of the African people and prosecutes the European tradition. The narrator believes that Africans “have not found that lying trick to [their] taste, the trick of making up sure knowledge of things possible to think of, things possible to wonder about but impossible to know in any such ultimate way” (4). Armah is challenging European ideology. He is condemning Europeans of their impractical behaviour and telling them that the African race knows better than the European race. Although recorded...