The Writer as a Dreamer: Utopia and the Ideals of Utopianism in Ngozi Chuma-Udehas The Presidential Handshake

Abstract

Literature mirrors society and literary artists reflect the realities of lives in their various societies through their literary works. Ngozi Chuma-Udeh is one of the Nigerian writers who use their literary works to advance political goals all geared and targeted towards a more humane and prosperous society. Utopia as a concept is coined from the two Greek words: outopia which means 'no place' and eutopia which means 'the good place' and both words combined together to mean "the good place in no place". This is the idea of a perfect world that obviously conflicts with our real world of reality. Utopian novels, therefore, are the type of novels where the writers create a perfect and beautiful world; a world where everything is good and ideal, a paradise where people and society thrive in harmony and human development and achievements flower at their peaks. This world is far from our world of reality, our world of flesh and blood but writers create them perhaps to show a picture of an ideal world and also to see if we can through constant effort and quest strive to model our world to a greater extent in the form of the ideal world. This paper adopted the utopian perspective in literary works as the framework for this study. The paper is interested in determining the real life social -political and economic realities that obviously gave rise to the issues in the novel under discourse.