Deconstructing Enid Blyton: Writing a post-colonial Enid Blyton mystery novel

In spite of her elitism, sexism, racism, xenophobia, her scandalous and abrasive personal life, and her bland, colourless, formulaic writing, Enid Blyton remains one of the best-selling children’s writers of all time and still continues to enchant children of all ages. Fifty years after her death, there has been an upsurge of interest in her writing, calling to attention the narrative complexity of her plots, characters and richly imaginative themes that outlive the personal, socio-political context in which the books were written. In this paper, I explore the essentials of her phenomenal creative output, showing how her books were read and loved by African children in Zimbabwean schools, and how I then wrote a post-colonial young adult mystery novel, The Secret of Old Mukiwa, drawing on what I call the 'Enid Blyton method'.