“With the Exception of [Ali] Banana:” Second World War Bildung in the Burmese Jungle in Biyi Bandele’s Burma Boy (2007)

Biyi Bandele’s Burma Boy (2007) is exceptional in various ways. The novel deals with the Burma campaign, a series of battles fought in the former British colony of Burma during the Second World War. Bandele’s novel is therefore exceptional in the context of the Nigerian war novel, which has mostly addressed the Nigerian Civil War (1967‑70). This exceptionality is also found in the fact that Bandele rewrites the Eurocentric narrative of WWII and gives a voice to those who have long been silenced in history books, i.e. West African soldiers involved in a deadly conflict far away from their homes, fighting for a country with which they had little in common. The ultimate exceptionality of the novel lies in the rewriting of the Bildungsroman genre in a novel in which the self is fragmented; this contradicts the unified self found in the traditional version of the genre