Africa's best books and more...
Death has robbed us of Chinua Achebe – one of the most influential writers of his time. Undoubtedly Africa’s best known writer, Achebe stood for many things. To many, he was the father of African literature – recognized worldwide for his book, Things Fall Apart, the most translated African work of all time, which has sold more than 12 million copies and appeared in over 50 languages.
Our selection for the month of March is There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra, the recent book released by legendary Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe. Published by the Penguin Press, this long-awaited memoir revisits the Nigeria civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict pitted the Nigerian federal government against the breakaway state of Biafra. A marriage of history and memoir, vivid firsthand observation and decades of further research and reflection, There Was a Country is a work whose wisdom and compassion remind us of Chinua Achebe’s place as one of the great literary and moral voices of our age. Enter this month’s competition for a chance to win a copy of Chinua Achebe’s latest book.
Released last month in the UK (and later this month in the USA and Nigeria) by Penguin Press, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra is the latest book from renowned Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe. Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, Achebe’s memoir about the brutal three-year Biafran war is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection.
Published by Heinemann in 1987, African Short Stories is a collection of short stories written by writers from different parts of Africa and edited by the Nigerian celebrated author Chinua Achebe and C.L Innes. The range of stories in this collection is diverse and covers a broad and wide spectrum, rich in African themes.
In The Trouble with Nigeria, acclaimed author Chinua Achebe addresses his country’s problems, and the challenges that hold back Nigeria from moving forward. His arguments, however, are relevant not just for Nigeria but for many other countries.
Arrow of God, republished by Anchor in 1989, is Achebe’s third novel following after Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease. The first paragraph in the novel starts thus: ‘This is the third nightfall since he began to look for signs of the new moon. He knew it would come today but he always [...]
Things Fall Apart is the most translated African work of all time, appearing in over 50 languages, and has sold more than 8 million copies. It was not only the author’s first novel, but also among the first African books to be written in English, both of which facts make it all the more remarkable that it is still widely regarded as the seminal work of English language African literature.
In this volume of essays, first published in the USA in 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf, Chinua Achebe walks us through time; through his thoughts on politics and personalities; colonialism and self-identity; oppression and history and even the bias of narrative in children’s books.
Chinua Achebe’s fourth novel, “A Man of The People”, is a book of political, social, economic and moral contrasts. Written in first person, the books invites readers to experience the flow of emotions, fears, tensions, suspense and the pain that Odili, the main character in the book, undergoes.
CNN recently published a story on young writers starting a new chapter in Nigeria’s literary history. The story, part of a new series, I-List, focused on Nigeria as a country fifty years after independence. Among the writers mentioned was 19 year-old Chibundu Onuzo who has recently won a book deal with Faber for her first novel, The Spider King’s Daughter. The book is due to come out in 2011.
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