Writing the Failure of Nation-state Building after Decolonization: Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People and V.S.Naipaul’s The Mimic Men

Abstract

This study has presented nation-state building and national identity in two novels of post colonial societies: A Man of The People (1966) by Chinua Achebe and The Mimic Men (1967) by V S Naipaul. Our major interest has been to show the struggle of peoples of the Third World and the difficulties that faced them in their project of building their nation-state. To achieve our purpose, we have relied on three theorists: Benedict Anderson’s notion of nationalism as explained in his book Imagined Communities (1983), Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry explained in his book The Location of Culture (1994), and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961). We have attempted to show how the two works share the same attitudes toward nation-state building, and its disillusionment caused by political corruption, politician’s incompetence and the people’s loss of identity and their mimicry of their former colonizer.