No critical category has influenced so much the theory and practice of cultural studies than the concept of intertextuality. Initially confined to the analysis of literature, intertextual theory has enlarged its scope of intervention to include film adaptation, painting, music and even the most recent types of Web literacy. This paper argues that for well-known historical reasons, modern African literature, and more specifically the modern African novel has not waited for the formalisation and theorization of intertextuality to make of it a central critical issue. Taking our bearings from post-colonial theory, we wish to demonstrate that the controversy over the appropriate mode of representation in modern African literature between the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and the Ghanaian Ayi Kwei Armah has much to do with the different templates of intertextuality that they deploy. This quarrel over the appropriate template to be used will be discussed with reference to Achebe’s