An earlier version of Lesson 1i appeared under the tide 'What is Realism?' in Salmagundi nos. 114-15 (1997).

An earlier version of Lesson 2 appeared as 'The Novel in Africa', Occasional Paper no. 17 of the Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California at Berkeley, 1999. Cheikh Hamidou Kane is quoted from Phanuel Akubueze Egejuru, Towards African Literary Independence (Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980), by permission of the author. Paul Zumthor is quoted from Introduction à la poésie orale, by permission of Editions du Seuil.

Lessons 3 and 4 were published, with responses by Peter Singer, Marjorie Garber, Wendy Doniger and Barbara Smuts, as The Lives of Animals (Princeton University Press, 1999).

An earlier version of Lesson 5 appeared as 'Die Menschenwissenschaften in Afrika' / 'The Humanities in Africa' (Siemens Stiftung, Munich, 2001).

An earlier version of Lesson 6 appeared in Salmagundi nos. 137-38 (2003).

'Letter of Elizabeth, Lady Chandos' was published by Intermezzo Press, Austin, Texas, in 2002.