Nollywood may be, for Wole Soyinka, an “unprepossessing monstrosity” or a sordid “thrill of the grotesque,” but for Binyavanga Wainaina it represents a powerful revolutionary impulse much needed in contemporary African literary culture. In a recent video posted by Writers Center Norwich, Binyavanga makes the claim that the salvation of African literary publishing lies in getting Africans hooked on African fiction. Nollywood may be trashy, “diabolically melodramatic thrillers,” but Africans are hooked on it.

African writers produce in literary prose — a language and cultural ethos in which they do not live. Nollywood, on the other hand, produce stories in the languages in which Nigerian life is transacted. They produce stories that are relevant to Africans, stories that capture the urgency of the African moment. “Chimamanda’s books are not going to build industries,” Binyavanga insists. “What will build industries are having thousands and thousands of romance books, of kids’ fantasy books, of transporting our children away, getting them hooked on these things…like Nollywood.”

Cultural movements like Nollywood and the Nigerian music industry are, therefore, the ones “creating the revolution.” Not African literature. They constitute the “avant-garde?” Not African novelists. They are the ones creating new markets, new content, and tapping into forms and archetypes that are genuinely relevant to African life.

African critics, writers, and publishers have to move away from the “ridiculous, complaining position of saying that there are no novels” and begin to mobilize African readers around fiction that captivates their imagination. Binyavanga concludes: “I’m not part of this sentimental, nostalgic, where-did-literature-go, loving-the-smell-of-books, proust-proust nonsense. I want to be part of the new world.” And this world, he argues, lies in the path already paved by Nollywood and other pop-culture movements on the continent.

Here’s a transcript  of the video (lightly edited for easy reading):