Intertextuality in the contemporary Swahili novel: Euphrase Kezilahabi`s Nagona and William E. Mkufya`s Ziraili na Zirani

This paper deals with intertextuality in two contemporary Swahili novels: Euphrase Kezilahabi`s Nagona (1987/1990) and William E. Mkufya`s Ziraili na Zirani (1999). It is a first approach to intertextual relations between these two novels. My aim is to show how the contemporary Swahili novel has further opened up its scope to universal questions of mankind. Nagona describes the journey of an unnamed protagonist through strangely abandoned landscapes and his surrealistic experience. It is written in a puzzling style between realism and hallucination. The second work, Ziraili na Zirani, is a novel written in the style of an epic. Dwelling on its literary role models, which are Dante`s Divina Commedia (1312-1321) and Milton`s Paradise Lost (1658-1665), it describes the battle over religion. It takes the reader on a fantastic journey between heaven, paradise and hell, with several excursions to the historical and contemporary malices and catastrophes on earth