Helon Habila, Waiting for an Angel

Rita Nnodim (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts)
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The socio-political and economic climate of late 1980s and 1990s Nigeria forms the backdrop of Habila’s first prose fiction, Waiting for an Angel. These are the last years of Ibrahim Babangida’s rule and the years of Sani Abacha’s ruthless military dictatorship, years characterized by economic crisis and an oppressive political climate: “What this story tries to do is to capture the mood of those // years, especially the Abacha years: the despair, the frenzy, the stubborn hope, but above all the airless prison-like atmosphere that characterized them” (Habila 2004, 228-229).

Waiting for an Angel is a collection of stories, each revolving around the lives of a few central characters, connected through the …

803 words

Citation: Nnodim, Rita. "Waiting for an Angel". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 July 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24876, accessed 19 April 2024.]

24876 Waiting for an Angel 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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