Scholars are beginning to research the presence of disability in African literature, focusing on the way such portrayals either challenge or confirm various views about disability. In this article, the aim is to examine how Helon Habila deliberately links disability, precarity and narrative agency through the presentation of several disabled characters who are also incidentally presented as story-tellers in two novels, Waiting for an Angel (2003) and Measuring Time (2007). However, they do more than just tell stories – they also use the feature of disability as an anchor around which to construct their narratives. The article, therefore, advances the argument that, in the selected texts, Habila challenges the association of the disabled body with precarity, mainly through illustrating the agency accorded to that body through the narrativisation. Further, the setting of civil war in the two texts is highlighted as a particularly disabling environment, which Habila criticises through these characters.

中文翻译：

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读海伦·哈比拉《等待天使和测量时间》中的不稳定、残疾和叙事代理

学者们开始研究非洲文学中残疾的存在，重点关注这种描绘方式挑战或证实了关于残疾的各种观点。在这篇文章中，目的是通过展示几个残疾角色，他们在《等待天使》（2003）和《测量时间》中偶然被呈现为讲故事的人，来研究 Helon Habila 如何有意地将残疾、不稳定和叙事能力联系起来(2007)。然而，他们所做的不仅仅是讲故事——他们还利用残疾的特征作为构建叙事的基础。因此，这篇文章提出了一个论点，即在选定的文本中，Habila 挑战了残疾身体与不稳定的关联，主要是通过叙述来说明赋予该身体的机构。