Summary The focus of this article is on the literary representations of women in postcolonial wartime narratives by African female novelists. An important assumption drives this article, namely, that women are largely absent from discussions on the interventions they can make to help fight social injustice, even though violence and resistance to injustice are mostly mediated through images of women and their bodies. Specifically, the article examines how Nadifa Mohamed employs agency as a discursive technique for negotiating female identities and dismantling oppressive structures in The Orchard of Lost Souls. The article is cognizant of Annie Gagiano's views that recent African female authors' novels have gained prominence in tackling national(ist) issues through their imagination of the nation with moral profundity and historical force, placing the women themselves at the centre of this national imagination. I argue that the leading female characters in Mohamed's novel reconstruct their subalternity all too predictably to fight gendered violence and social vice, thereby contributing to the nationalist fervour that is underway in the narrative context of the novel.

中文翻译：

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“由更严格的材料制成”：纳迪法·穆罕默德（Nadifa Mohamed）的《失魂果园》中的女性能动性和韧性

总结 本文的重点是非洲女性小说家在后殖民战时叙事中对女性的文学表现。一个重要的假设推动了这篇文章，即女性基本上没有参与关于她们可以采取哪些干预措施来帮助打击社会不公正的讨论，尽管暴力和对不公正的抵抗主要是通过女性及其身体的形象来调解的。具体而言，本文研究了 Nadifa Mohamed 如何将代理作为一种话语技术来协商女性身份和拆除《失魂果园》中的压迫结构。文章认识到安妮·加吉亚诺 (Annie Gagiano) 的观点，即近期非洲女性作家的小说凭借其对民族的道德深度和历史力量的想象，在处理民族（ist）问题方面获得了突出地位，将女性自身置于这个民族想象的中心。我认为，穆罕默德小说中的主要女性角色完全可以预见地重建了她们的次要地位，以对抗性别暴力和社会恶习，从而促进了小说叙事背景中正在进行的民族主义热情。