Shakespeare and Literary Africa: Encounters by Dissonance in Coetzee, Soyinka, Gordimer

What are we to make of Shakespeare’s unexpected presence in texts which originate in traumatic events, individual and collective, in present Africa, yet do not deal with Africa in any direct or explicit way? The article offers a reflection on the emergence of Shakespeare in three texts by contemporary authors from Africa (Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee). It explores the modalities of apparition of Shakespeare (none of the texts being a ‘rewriting’ proper) and addresses the question of how to read literary allusion in relation to the 'literary Africa' emerging in the texts.