This work focuses on the cultural politics of magical realism, as exemplified in the fiction of Syl Cheney-Coker of Sierra Leone, Ben Okri of Nigeria and Kojo Laing of Ghana and contextualizes their fiction within current debates and theories around the "postcolonial" globally. Providing a thoughtful introduction to magical realism as a genre Cooper uses Cheney-Coker, Okri and Laing to discuss the particular and distinct intervention of magical realism in a West African context. She examines the narrative techniques of novels that mingle the dimensions of magic, myth and historical reality, and addresses their position in relation to the more explicitely nationalist agendas of the realism of Achebe and others.
