Paratextual Negotiation in Northern Nigerian Fiction: A Reading of Abubakar Adam Ibrahim's When We Were Fireflies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61320/jolcc.v4i2.346-365Keywords:
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Nigerian Fiction, Paratexts, Reincarnation, When We Were FirefliesAbstract
This article analyses Abubakar Adam Ibrahim's When We Were Fireflies (2023), focusing on how the author deploys paratexts in shaping the readers' interpretation of the novel's central concern with reincarnation and contemporary Nigerian realities. Drawing on Genette's theory of paratexts, Weber and Stein's paratextual negotiation, and Nöth's visual semiotics, the study combines close reading with visual and textual analysis of its paratextual elements. The study contends that the novel's paratextual apparatus functions as a threshold co-narrative rather than a mere supplement to the main text. The study reveals how Ibrahim's paratextual apparatus serves as a structural principle, orchestrating the narrative's engagement with suspended states: between past and present, life and death, local and global, doctrinal and experiential. Rather than asserting a direct parallel between paratextual mediation and reincarnation, the article demonstrates that both operate as non-linear, contested and culturally situated thresholds; zones of transition, negotiation and resistance where meaning is continually shaped and redirected. The findings demonstrate that the cover, the title's temporal grammar, the rainbow chapter sequence, the authority of the epigraphs and the gendered framing of endorsements collectively construct interpretive frameworks that guide the reader's understanding before, during and after engaging with the narrative. The findings suggest that Nigerian fiction, as exemplified by this novel, not only utilises paratexts but transforms them into a site of artistic negotiation with temporality, identity and meaning. By foregrounding paratexts as dynamic, mediating interfaces, this article contributes to the ongoing debates within postcolonial African literary studies by modelling a culturally situated, multimodal paratextual analysis that treats paratexts as dynamic, mediating interfaces, demonstrating that Nigerian fiction transforms paratexts into a site of artistic negotiation with temporality, identity, trauma and meaning.
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