Book launch: Decolonizing Christianities in Contemporary Nigerian Literature, by Adriaan van Klinken

The programme will include an interview with the author, reflections on the book, and a plenary Q&A

The Leeds University Centre for African Studies and the Centre for Religion and Public Life invite you to attend the launch of the latest book by Prof. Adriaan van Klinken, titled Decolonizing Christianities in Contemporary Nigerian Literature.

The programme will include an interview with the author, by Emmanuel Erhijodo; reflections on and responses to the book by Dr Abel Ugba and Dr Megan Fourqurean; a plenary Q&A led by Gloria Adichie; and is followed by an informal drinks reception.

About the book

In his recently published book Decolonizing Christianities in Contemporary Nigerian Literature (Penn State University Press, November 2025), Adriaan van Klinken critically examines a major shift in the African literary engagement with Christianity as a socio-cultural force, and explores literary writing as a form of innovative religious thought, and explores literary writing as a form of innovative religious thought.

In African literature, Christianity has long been represented as a foreign religion, associated with the history and ongoing legacies of European colonialism and mission. But in recent decades, writers have begun to engage with it in more complex, ambivalent, and at times liberatory ways that are reflective of the religion’s tremendous growth and diverse transformations across the continent.

Adriaan van Klinken addresses this literary shift in the context of Nigeria, a major centre of literary production and Christian growth on the continent. Through close dialogue with works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Okey Ndibe, Chinelo Okparanta, and others, Van Klinken probes the lived and imagined experiences of Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism across Nigeria in the wake of decolonization. Taking Nigerian literary writers seriously as social and religious thinkers, Van Klinken puts their novels into conversation with the works of major African theologians, philosophers, and social theorists.

By foregrounding the creative theologizing that fiction writing participates in, this book demonstrates how these literary texts—beyond merely representing and critiquing sociopolitical realities—also take part in envisioning the alternative worldmaking potential of Christian traditions in the Nigerian context.

About the contributors to this event

• Gloria Adichie is a PhD student in African Religious and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds.
• Emmanuel Erhijodo is a PhD student in African Religious and Literary Studies at the University of Leeds.
• Megan Fourqurean is Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool.
• Abel Ugba is Associate Professor of Sociology, in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds
• Adriaan van Klinken is Professor of Religion and African Studies, in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds.