The texts in this study were chosen for the range of attitudes they display to literacy. If the chronological structure of the study suggests a history of literacy in Africa and the West Indies or a history of postcolonial literature, that history is necessarily incomplete and potentially misleading. It may be that the relation of African and Caribbean writers to reading and writing has worsened over the generations, but that trend has not been consistent. Ìsarà, the most optimistic of the novels discussed here, is also the most recent in terms of publication. It is also not the case that West Africans or West Indians are all more favourably disposed to writing than Southern Africans like Marechera. Certainly literary dystopias, an African speciality, are remarkably evenly distributed across the continent.

One conclusion this study does invite is that African and West Indian novels set in the present are more likely to be pessimistic about literacy than are novels set in the past. And the reason for that is not (just) that there was more reason for hope in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second. The reason is that African and West Indian writers are most suspicious of writing when they consider its capacity to reach contemporary readers and most grateful to writing for its power to preserve memory and even restore the dead.