[With] some thought, the sources of irritation [in Charles Larson's book] become manifold. First, there is the title itself—The Emergence of African Fiction—which indicates a scope not attempted. African fiction is not merely African prose literature since World War II, because fictional arts existed in Africa since traditional times. Neither did African fiction in European languages emerge only after World War II; such fiction goes back to the 1880's in Portuguese Africa…. Mr. Larson's study is as generally weak on history as it is on non-Anglophone African fiction as a whole.

It appears that "emergence" is used, not in an etymological but in a figurative and personal sense of "emerging into the mainstream of Western tradition," the note on which the study's last chapter ends. (pp. 91-2)

[The] authorial personality in The Emergence of African Fiction obtrudes, moving further and further away, as the chapters progress...