Humour as a Coping Mechanism and Narrative Strategy in Emeka Ukwuaba’s Hypnotising Minefield

The use of humour in African fiction as both a survival strategy for characters and a rhetorical tool for authors has attracted growing critical attention, particularly in relation to Nigerian literature where the comic tradition has deep roots in oral performance, Nollywood, and Afrobeat. This study examines how Emeka Ukwuaba deploys dark humour and satirical comedy in Hypnotising Minefield (2025) as a dual narrative strategy: one that humanises the suffering of characters while simultaneously exposing the absurdity of the social and political conditions that produce their suffering. The study is anchored on the theoretical framework of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque, which locates humour as a subversive cultural force that temporarily inverts established hierarchies and exposes their underlying contradictions. A qualitative close-reading methodology is employed, supported by recent scholarship on comedy and satire in African literary studies published within the last five years. Findings reveal that Ukwuaba's humour is most potent in scenes that juxtapose moral gravity with comic incongruity, such as the post-execution scene involving the Indian hemp-concealing Bible-quoting bus conductor. These moments of dark comedy function as moments of critical revelation rather than relief. The study concludes that humour in Hypnotising Minefield is not an escape from serious social critique but its most effective vehicle, and recommends further studies of the comic mode in socially engaged contemporary Nigerian fiction.

Keywords: Dark humour, Satire, Emeka Ukwuaba, Carnivalesque, Nigerian fiction