摘要：The Bildungsroman is undoubtedly a Western genre which articulates the growth process of the protagonist in a narrative that is usually autobiographical in form. The text charts the development of the protagonist which is both psychological and biological. The most fascinating aspect of this genre is the eventual reintegration of the protagonist into a recognizable society after numerous journeys, both physical and psychological. This paper is therefore an attempt to demonstrate that the form is no longer just a Western genre that traces the growth process of a protagonist who is white, male and bourgeois, postcolonial African writers have taken advantage of the suppleness of the form to demonstrate that growth is a universal human experience and the question of identity formation is relative. The traditional Bildungsroman has thus been subverted by postcolonial African writers to account for the African experience. To give the paper its textual moorings, a review of texts written in the first decade of this millennium is undertaken to demonstrate that most recent African narratives fall within the latitude of the genre and this is what constitutes the new face of the genre. I therefore label the African brand of the genre as postcolonial African Bildungsroman .
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