Exploring Society Through Literature: A Study of Habila’s <i>Oil</i><i> </i><i>on</i><i> </i><i>Water</i> and Emech

Colonialism has meaningfully participated in the change of many things in African world. Form social degradation to environmental change, African society remains politicized by new colonial settings. These settings are built through the colonial order and continue to impact African people’s lives. In Nigeria, like anywhere in Africa, social phenomena have changed with the effects of colonialism. The present paper explores “Literature” and “Society” as two foundational social and political figures in the exploration of human life. Buchi Emecheta and Helon Habila’s <i>The</i><i> </i><i>Joys</i><i> </i><i>of</i><i> </i><i>Motherhood</i> (1979) and <i>Oil</i><i> </i><i>on</i><i> </i><i>Water</i> (2010) are special works when talking about Women’s conditions and sociopolitical realities before, during, and after colonial rule. Through close reading and theories developed in relation to the most relevant themes in these two novels, we seek to explore women's conditions, the consequence of oil production, social change, and social struggle. The present work investigates the dynamic relationships between literature and society, examining how literary texts shape and are shaped by the social, political, and cultural conditions. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives from sociological literary criticism, this research paper underscores literature’s role as a mirror and a critique of societal structures, ideologies, and transformations. Helon Habila and Buchi Emecheta give two important representative images of African postcolonial society and politics. They develop in the selected novels African post-colonial social facts in relation to their social and political concerns, more precisely their country, Nigeria. Emecheta explores women conditions while Habila tries to analyze the effects of oil exploitation in postcolonial context. This review is an analysis of social representation of women’s conditions and oil production in Africa.