The Resilience Narrative in Emeka Ukwuaba’s Fiction: Survival and Redemption in Benign Pain and Hypnotising Minefield

Resilience as a narrative and ideological construct has received growing critical attention in African literary studies, particularly as scholars examine how fiction produced in contexts of sustained social crisis constructs possibilities for individual and collective recovery. This study investigates the resilience narrative in Emeka Ukwuaba's Benign Pain (2021) and Hypnotising Minefield (2025), examining how both novels construct survival and redemption as deliberate thematic and ideological outcomes. The study is anchored on resilience theory as applied to literary studies, drawing on recent scholarship that examines how fiction models psychological and social recovery in postcolonial African contexts. A qualitative close-reading methodology is employed, supported by secondary literature published within the last five years. Findings reveal that Ukwuaba consistently balances his unflinching depictions of suffering with narrative arcs that affirm the possibility of renewal. In Benign Pain, both Nebuwa and Lebechi overcome profound personal and social trauma to achieve stability and purpose. In Hypnotising Minefield, resilience functions at both the individual and communal level, as characters and their families reconstitute themselves in the aftermath of institutional violence. The study concludes that Ukwuaba's deployment of the resilience narrative serves not merely as a narrative strategy of consolation but as a form of ideological intervention that affirms human dignity against systemic dehumanisation. It recommends further comparative studies of resilience narratives across contemporary Nigerian fiction.

Keywords: Resilience, Survival, Emeka Ukwuaba, Redemption, Nigerian fiction