Tuesday 20 December 2011

Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English | Ken Saro-Wiwa

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Review

‘This is both a novel of self-discovery and an indictment of a corrupt and muddled war – a kind of sombre picaresque lifted by the vivacity of its language’
Helen Birch, City Limits

William Boyd, who has written the introduction to Sozaboy, has described the author as ‘an extraordinary man and an extraordinary writer.’

Book Description

Sozaboy describes the fortunes of a young naive recruit in the Nigerian Civil War: from the first proud days of recruitment to the disillusionment, confusion and horror that follows. The author's use of 'rotten English' - a mixture of Nigerian pidgin English, broken English and idiomatic English - makes this a unique and powerful novel.

About the Author

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Ken Saro-Wiwa, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, was a novelist, publisher, journalist and human rights activist. He was a committed and tireless campaigner on human rights and environmental issues. In November 1995 he was executed by the Nigerian authorities.

Woman at Point Zero | Nawal el Saadawi

Review

'Nawal el Saadawi writes with directness and passion, transforming the systematic brutalisation of peasants and of women in to powerful allegory' --New York Times

'A dramatic symbolised version of female revolt against the norms of the Arab world' --The Guardian

'It is a remarkable book. Painful, compulsive reading. I am sure some of you know all about it but for those who don't this short novel, or creative non-fiction as the author describes it, is the story of Fidraus, a prostitute about to be executed for murdering her pimp. Her life is recounted in a little over 100 pages but each one leaves an indelible mark. This is a tale of injustice, inequality and sheer bad luck to rival all those bloody misery memoirs that litter the supermarkets but it is written with such grace and skill as to be on a par with the finest literature of this or any era.' --Scott Pack, The Friday Project

Product Description

'All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face. But because I am a woman I have never had the courage to lift my hand. And because I am a prostitute, I hid my fear under layers of make-up'. So begins Firdaus' story, leading to her grimy Cairo prison cell, where she welcomes her death sentence as a relief from her pain and suffering. Born to a peasant family in the Egyptian countryside, Firdaus suffers a childhood of cruelty and neglect. Her passion for education is ignored by her family, and on leaving school she is forced to marry a much older man. Following her escapes from violent relationships, she finally meets Sharifa who tells her that 'A man does not know a woman's value the higher you price yourself the more he will realise what you are really worth' and leads her into a life of prostitution. Desperate and alone, she takes drastic action. Saadawi's searing indictment of society's brutal treatment of women continues to resonate today. This classic novel has been an inspiration to countless people across the world.

About the Author

Nawal El Saadawi is a renowned Egyptian writer, novelist and activist. She has published over 40 books, which have been translated into over 30 languages. Her novels include Woman at Point Zero , God Dies by the Nile , The Circling Song , she has also written two volumes of autobiography Daughter of Isis and Walking Through Fire , non-fiction collections including 'The Hidden Face of Eve' and 'The Essential Nawal el Saadawi'.

Season of Migration to the North | Tayeb Salih

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Book Description

'SEASON OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH - An Arabian Nights in reverse, enclosing a pithy moral about international misconceptions and delusions. The brilliant student of an earlier generation returns to his Sudanese village; obsession with the mysterious West and a desire to bite the hand that has half-fed him, has led him to London and the beds of women with similar obsessions about the mysterious East. He kills them at the point of ecstasy and the Occident, in its turn, destroys him. Powerfully and poetically written and splendidly translated by Denys Johnson-Davies.' Observer

About the Author

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Tayeb Salih was born in 1929 in the Northern Province of Sudan but has lived most of his life outside Sudan. He went to University in England before working at the BBC as Head of Drama in the Arabic Service and for UNESCO in Paris and Qatar.

Paradise | Abdulrazak Gurnah

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Review
'Many layered, violent, beautiful and strange ... a poetic and vividly conjured book about Africa and the brooding power of the unknown' Independent on Sunday 'An aural archive of a lost Africa ... Tangling travel adventures, social documentary, political indictment and a doomed love story ... Paradise is alive with the unexpected. In it, an obliterated world is enthrallingly retrieved' Sunday Times 'Gurnah evokes his world in poetic prose which is pure and lucid - a small paradise in itself ... The pleasures, sadnesses and losses in all the shining facets of this book are lingering and exquisite' Guardian 'Paradise is that rare thing, a novel that is totally convincing in the vivid physical world it presents, yet transcending that world and reaching into the universal. Folk tale, travel story, drama of love and loss, by turns touching and horrifying, it is a novel to be grateful for' Barry Unsworth

Guardian

‘Gurnah evokes his world in poetic prose which is pure and lucid — a small paradise in itself.’

Guardian

‘The pleasures, sadnesses and losses in all the shining facets of this book are lingering and exquisite.’

Product Description

Born in East Africa, Yusuf has few qualms about the journey he is to make. It never occurs to him to ask why he is accompanying Uncle Aziz or why the trip has been organised so suddenly, and he does not think to ask when he will be returning. But the truth is that his 'uncle' is a rich and powerful merchant and Yusuf has been pawned to him to pay his father's debts, Paradise is a rich tapestry of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition, the story of a young boy's coming of age against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

About the Author


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Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 in Zanzibar and teaches at the University of Kent. He is the author of the novels Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise, Admiring Silence and By the Sea. His fourth novel, Paradise (1994) was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prizes.

The Famished Road | Ben Okri

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You have never read a novel like this one. Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize for fiction, The Famished Road tells the story of Azaro, a spirit-child. Though spirit-children rarely stay long in the painful world of the living, when Azaro is born he chooses to fight death: "I wanted", he says, "to make happy the bruised face of the woman who would become my mother." Survival in his chaotic African village is a struggle, though. Azaro and his family must contend with hunger, disease and violence, as well as the boy's spirit- companions, who are constantly trying to trick him back into their world. Okri fills his tale with unforgettable images and characters: the bereaved policeman and his wife, who try to adopt Azaro and dress him in their dead son's clothes; the photographer who documents life in the village and displays his pictures in a cabinet by the roadside; Madame Koto, "plump as a mighty fruit", who runs the local bar; the King of the Road, who gets hungrier the more he eats.
At the heart of this hypnotic novel are the mysteries of love and human survival. "It is more difficult to love than to die", says Azaro's father, and indeed, it is love that brings real sharpness to suffering here. As the story moves toward its climax, Azaro must face the consequences of choosing to live, of choosing to walk the road of hunger rather than return to the benign land of spirits. The Famished Road is worth reading for its last line alone, which must be one of the most devastating endings in contemporary literature (but don't skip ahead). -- R. Ellis

Review

"A brilliant read, unlike anything you have ever read before...the message is universal." -- Philip Howard, "The Times"
"Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence. As one startling image follows the next, The Famished Road begins to read like an epic poem that happens to touch down just this side of prose.... When I finished the book and went outside, it was as if all the trees of South London had angels sitting in them." -- Linda Grant, "Independent on Sunday"
"It is a rich, provocative and hopeful vision of the world, stuffed full of drama and surprise.... Its literary lineage -- the ease with which spirits move through everyday life -- is from ancient Greece and medieval romances." -- Robert Winder, "Independent"
"Overwhelming...just buy it for its beauty." -- Jenny Turner, "New Statesman & Society"

Linda Grant, Independent on Sunday

‘When I finished the book and went outside, it was as if all the trees of South London had angels sitting in them’

Robert Winder, Independent

‘It is a rich, provocative and hopeful vision of the world, stuffed full of drama and surprise…'

Jenny Turner, New Statesman & Society

‘Overwhelming…just buy it for its beauty’

Book Description

Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize and the first book in Okri's acclaimed trilogy

Product Description

Azaro is a spirit child who is born only to live for a short while before returning to the idyllic world of his spirit companions. Now he has chosen to stay in the world of the living. This is his story. (20021018)

From the Publisher

Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize.

From the Back Cover

'A dazzling achievement for any writer in any language' New York Times Book Review

'A rich, provocative and hopeful vision of the world, stuffed full of drama and surprise' Independent

Azaro is a spirit child who is born only to live for a short while before returning to the idyllic world of his spirit companions. Now he has chosen to stay in the world of the living. This is his story.


'A brilliant read...unlike anything you have ever read before...the message is universal' The Times

Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence... When I finished the book and went outside, it was as if all the trees of South London has angels sitting in them' Independent on Sunday

'A masterly portrait' Guardian

'Overwhelming...just buy it for its beauty' New Statesman

Also by Ben Okri in The Famished Road trilogy: [jpegs of Songs and Infinite Riches]

About the Author

Ben Okri's books have won several awards including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the prestigious International Literary Prize Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore 1993. The Famished Road won the Booker Prize in 1991. He was born in Minna, Nigeria. 

No Longer at Ease | Chinua Achebe

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Obi Okonkwo is an idealistic young man who, thanks to the privileges of an education in Britain, has now returned to Nigeria for a job in the civil service. However in his new role he finds that the way of government seems to be backhanders and corruption. Obi manages to resist the bribes that are offered to him, but when he falls in love with an unsuitable girl - to the disapproval of his parents - he sinks further into emotional and financial turmoil. The lure of easy money becomes harder to refuse, and Obi becomes caught in a trap he cannot escape.
Showing a man lost in cultural limbo, and a Nigeria entering a new age of disillusionment, No Longer at Ease concludes Achebe's remarkable trilogy charting three generations of an African community under the impact of colonialism, the first two volumes of which are Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.

Plot Summary
The novel opens with the trial of Obi Okonkwo on a charge of accepting a bride. It then jumps back in time to a point before his departure for England and works its way forward to describe how Obi ended up on trial.
The members of the Umuofia Progressive Union (UPU), a group of Igbo men who have left their villages to live in major Nigerian cities, have taken up a collection to send Obi to England to study law, in the hope that he will return to help his people navigate English colonial society. But once there, Obi switches his major to English and meets Clara Okeke for the first time during a dance.
Obi returns to Nigeria after four years of studies and lives in Lagos with his friend Joseph. He takes a job with the Scholarship Board and is almost immediately offered a bribe by a man who is trying to obtain a scholarship for his little sister. When Obi indignantly rejects the offer, he is visited by the girl herself who implies that she will bribe him with sexual favors for the scholarship, another offer Obi rejects.
At the same time, Obi is developing a romantic relationship with Clara Okeke, a Nigerian girl who eventually reveals that she is an osu, an outcast by her descendants, meaning that Obi can not marry her under the traditional ways of the Igbo people of Nigeria. While he remains intent on marrying Clara, even his Christian  father opposes it, although reluctantly due to his desire to progress and eschew the "heathen" customs of pre-colonial Nigeria. His mother begs him on her deathbed not to marry Clara until after her death, threatening to kill herself if Obi disobeys. When Obi informs Clara of these events, Clara breaks the engagement and intimates that she is pregnant. Obi arranges an abortion, which Clara reluctantly undergoes, but she suffers complications and refuses to see Obi afterwards.
All the while, Obi sinks deeper into financial trouble, in part due to poor planning on his end, in part due to the need to repay his loan to the UPU and to pay for his siblings' educations, and in part due to the cost of the illegal abortion.
After hearing of his mother's death, Obi sinks into a deep depression, and refuses to go home for the funeral. When he recovers, he begins to accept bribes in a reluctant acknowledgement that it is the way of his world.
The novel closes as Obi takes a bribe and tells himself that it is the last one he will take, only to discover that the bribe was part of a sting operation. He is arrested, bringing us up to the events that opened the story

About the Author


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  • Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan. His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. Achebe joined the Biafran Ministry of Information and represented Biafra on various diplomatic and fund-raising missions. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad. For over fifteen years, he was the Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is now the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies at Brown University. Chinua Achebe has written over twenty books - novels, short stories, essays and collections of poetry - and has received numerous honours from around the world, including the Honourary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as honourary doctorates from more than thirty colleges and universities. He is also the recipient of Nigeria's highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction.

  • Book Details
  • Paperback: 144 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics (28 Jan 2010)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141191554
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141191553
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.6 x 1.4 cm

Arrow of God | Chinua Achebe

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Review


Ezeulu, headstrong chief priest of the god Ulu, is worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. But he is beginning to find his authority increasingly under threat - from his rivals in the tribe, from those in the white government and even from his own family. Yet he still feels he must be untouchable - surely he is an arrow in the bow of his God? Armed with this belief, he is prepared to lead his people, even if it means destruction and annihilation. Yet the people will not be so easily dominated.

Spare and powerful, Arrow of God is an unforgettable portrayal of the loss of faith, and the struggle between tradition and change. Continuing the epic saga of the community in Things Fall Apart, it is the second volume of Achebe's African trilogy, and is followed by No Longer at Ease.

About the Author


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Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan. His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. Achebe joined the Biafran Ministry of Information and represented Biafra on various diplomatic and fund-raising missions. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad. For over fifteen years, he was the Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is now the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies at Brown University. Chinua Achebe has written over twenty books - novels, short stories, essays and collections of poetry - and has received numerous honours from around the world, including the Honourary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as honourary doctorates from more than thirty colleges and universities. He is also the recipient of Nigeria's highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction.



  • Book Details:
  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics (28 Jan 2010)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141191562
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141191560
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm

Half of a Yellow Sun | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Review

`The first great African novel of the new century' Alison Lurie
--Guardian Books of the Decade, 2007

Independent

'This magnificent novel is a gripping portrayal of the horrors of
war...A major new African voice.'

The Times

'a powerfully convincing account of one of the bloodier episodes
of post-colonial history.'

Daily Mail

'...funny, heartbreaking, exquisitely written and, without doubt, a literary masterpiece and a classic.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Independent

'A magnificent novel.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Guardian

'Adichie is part of a new generation revisiting the history that her parents survived...' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Works Magazine

'Full of drama and characters you care about, this is an educational and enlightening read.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Times

'Adichie uses language with relish. Adichie's English is infused with rich poetry.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Telegraph

'What a travesty that Half of a Yellow Sun is not in contention for the Booker prize this year.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Sunday Times

'The novel sustains the interest with its engaging characters and its mostly artful simplicity of style.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, this is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written literary masterpiece. This highly anticipated novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood. The three main characters in the novel are swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer's house. The other is a young middle-class woman, Olanna, who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. And the third is a white man, a writer who lives in Nigeria for no clear reason, and who falls in love with Olanna's twin sister, a remote and enigmatic character. As these people's lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events. This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

From the Publisher

The Stories of Africa: a Q & A with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi
Q: What led you to write a book about the Nigeria-Biafra war?
I wrote this novel because I wanted to write about love and war, because I
grew up in the shadow of Biafra, because I lost both grandfathers in the
Nigeria-Biafra war, because I wanted to engage with my history in order to
make sense of my present, because many of the issues that led to the war
remain unresolved in Nigeria today, because my father has tears in his eyes
when he speaks of losing his father, because my mother still cannot speak
at length about losing her father in a refugee camp, because the brutal
bequests of colonialism make me angry, because the thought of the egos and
indifference of men leading to the unnecessary deaths of men and women and
children enrages me, because I don't ever want to forget. I have always
known that I would write a novel about Biafra. At 16, I wrote an awfully
melodramatic play called For Love of Biafra. Years later, I wrote short
stories, That Harmattan Morning, Half of a Yellow Sun and Ghosts, all
dealing with the war. I felt that I had to approach the subject with little
steps, paint on a smaller canvas first, before starting the novel.
Q: Given that at the time of the war you hadn't yet been born, what sort of
research did you do to prepare for writing this book?
I read books. I looked at photos. I talked to people. In the four years
that it took to finish the book, I would often ask older people I met,
`Where were you in 1967?' and then take it from there. It was from stories
of that sort that I found out tiny details that are important for fiction.
My parents' stories formed the backbone of my research. Still, I have a lot
of research notes that I did not end up using because I did not want to be
stifled by fact, did not want the political events to overwhelm the human
story.
Q: Are memories of the Nigeria-Biafra war still alive in Nigeria, talked
about on a regular basis, or do you feel that the conflict is being lost to
history as time passes and that it becomes less important to Igbo culture?
The war is still talked about, still a potent political issue. But I find
that it is mostly talked about in uninformed and unimaginative ways. People
repeat the same things they have been told without having a full grasp of
the complex nature of the war or they hold militant positions lacking in
nuance. It also remains, to my surprise, very ethnically divisive: the
(brave enough) Igbo talk about it and the non-Igbo think the Igbo should
get over it. There is a new movement called MASSOB, the Movement for the
Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, which in the past few years
has captured the imagination of many Igbo people. MASSOB is controversial;
it is reported to engage in violence and its leaders are routinely arrested
and harassed by the government. Still, despite its inchoate objectives,
MASSOB's grassroots support continues to grow. I think this is because it
gives a voice to many issues that have been officially swept aside by the
country but which continue to resonate for many Igbo people.
Q: The book focuses on the experiences of a small set of people who are
experiencing the conflict from very different points of view. When we step
into their individual worlds, we don't know their every thought - the
narrator who follows them isn't omniscient - but rather we seem to see and
understand them through a film. Can you describe your narrative style and
why you framed these characters the way you did?
I actually don't think of them as being seen through a `film'. I have
always been suspicious of the omniscient narrative. It has never appealed
to me, always seemed a little lazy and a little too easy. In an
introduction to the brilliant Italian writer Giovanni Verga's novel, it is
said about his treatment of his characters that he `never lets them analyze
their impulses but simply lets them be driven by them'. I wanted to write
characters who are driven by impulses that they may not always be
consciously aware of, which I think is true for us human beings. Besides, I
didn't want to bore my reader - and myself - to death, exploring the
characters' every thought.
Q: The character Richard is a British white expatriate who considers
himself Biafran, drawing a certain amount of quiet- and some loud-
criticism for his self-proclaimed identity. Another key narrator, Ugwu, is
a 13-year-old houseboy who reacts rather than acts. Both are interesting
choices for characters for the narrator to `shadow'. Why did you pick
them?
Ugwu was inspired in part by Mellitus, who was my parents' houseboy during
the war; in part by Fide, who was our houseboy when I was growing up. And I
have always been interested in the less obvious narrators. When my mom
spoke about Mellitus, what a blessing he was, how much he helped her, how
she did not know what she would have done without him, I remember being
moved but also thinking that he could not possibly have been the saint my
mother painted, that he must have been flawed and human. I think that Ugwu
does come to act more and react less as we watch him come into his own.
Richard was a more difficult choice. I very much wanted somebody to be the
Biafran `outsider' because I think that outsiders played a major role in
the war but I wanted him, also, to be human and real - and needy!

From the Author

In the Shadow of Biafra
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I taught an introductory creative writing class at Princeton last year and,
in addition to the classic `show don't tell', I often told my students that
their fiction needed to have `emotional truth'. I am not sure whether they
knew exactly what `emotional truth' meant. Sometimes I was not sure that I
did either, or perhaps it was simply that I could never fully define it. I
could, however, recognize it whenever I saw it: a quality different from
honesty and more resilient than fact, a quality that existed not in the
kind of fiction that explains but in the kind of fiction that shows. All
the novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have this
empathetic human quality. And because I write the kind of fiction I like to
read, when I started Half of a Yellow Sun, set before and during the
Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967-1970, I hoped that emotional truth would be its
major recognizable trait.
I hoped, too, that it would be the kind of character-driven war novel brave
enough to engage subtly with politics, as the Zimbabwean writer Shimmer
Chinodya does in his remarkable Harvest of Thorns. What struck me most
about Harvest of Thorns was that I emerged from it with a complex portrait
of Zimbabwe's war of independence from - at last - the point of view of
black Zimbabweans without ever feeling as if I had been lectured. The
wonderfully restrained sense of deep disappointment underlying Chinodya's
narrative reminded me of how similar the histories of many African
countries are, how passionately people believed in ideas that would
eventually disappoint them, in people that would betray them, in futures
that would elude them. The Biafra stories in Chinua Achebe's Girls at War
and Other Stories are also about what happens when the shiny things we once
believed in begin to rust before our eyes. Achebe's trademark compassionate
irony - he respects his characters but at the same time is amused by them
and expects the reader to be also - is not very obvious in Sugar Baby,
which is the best piece of fiction I have read about Biafra. It starts with
the narrator watching his friend Cletus fling a handful of sugar out of the
window. A symbolic act: Cletus is an unqualified sweet tooth (something he
must have developed as a student living in Ladbroke Grove) and the
unbearable sugar scarcity in Biafra led to humiliations, one involving the
loss of his girlfriend, another the rage of an Irish priest. Now that the
war is over, Cletus and his friends are eager to tell self-flagellating
stories of hardship, they `had become in those days like a bunch of old
hypochondriac women vying to recount the most lurid details of their own
special infirmities.' The narrator is reluctant to join in. For him, there
is something still too painful, too sacred, about their recent history; he
is not yet ready to laugh at the once-shiny rusted things.
Girls at War portrays a world inhabited by people who feel their
metaphysical losses more strongly than their material ones. Their
disillusion, their manic self-mockery, their fixation on survival, are all
corollaries of their deep faith in their cause. Achebe's war fiction then,
humane and pragmatic as it is, becomes an oblique paean to the
possibilities that Biafra held. The stories have an emotional power that
accumulate in an unobtrusive way and stun the reader at the end; there are
sentences in them that will always move me to tears.
Successful fiction does not need to be validated by `real life'; I cringe
whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is `real'. Yet, I find
myself thinking differently about these two war novels I admire. I have
often wondered how much of the character Benjamin in Harvest of Thorns
mirrors Shimmer Chinodya, how much of the muted defeat in Girls at War is
in fact what Chinua Achebe himself felt about the loss of Biafra. Perhaps
it is because to write realistic fiction about a war, especially one
central to the history of one's country, is to be constantly aware of a
responsibility to something larger than art. While writing Half of a Yellow
Sun, I enjoyed playing with minor things: inventing a train station in a
town that has none, placing towns closer to each other than they are,
changing the chronology of conquered towns. Yet I did not play with the
central events of that time. I could not let a character be changed by
anything that had not actually happened. If fiction is indeed the soul of
history, then I was equally committed to the fiction and the history,
equally keen to be true to the spirit of the time as well as to my artistic
vision of it.
The writing itself was a bruising experience. I struggled to maintain many
fragile balances. I cried often, was frequently crippled with doubt and
anxiety, often wondered whether to stop or to scale back. But there were
also moments of extravagant joy when I recognized, in a character or moment
or scene, that quality of emotional truth. 

About the Author

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka, where she attended primary and secondary schools. She went on to receive a BS in Communication and Political Science from Eastern Connecticut State University and an MA from Johns Hopkins University, both in the United States. Her short fiction has been published in literary journals including Granta, and won the International PEN/David Wong award in 2003. 'Purple Hibiscus', her first novel, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy award for debut fiction. She was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University for the 2005-2006 academic year. She lives in Nigeria.

Purple Hibiscus | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Review

'A beautiful and often harrowing story.' Observer Books of the Year 'A sensitive and touching story of a child exposed too early to religious intolerance and the uglier side of the Nigerian state.' J. M. Coetzee 'Political brutality and domestic violence, religion and witchcraft all merge with subtle force in this memorable novel. Chimammanda Ngozi Adichie uses childhood innocence to write Nigerian history with the eye of a family insider.' Hugo Hamilton 'Purple Hibiscus is the best debut I've read since Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things.' Jason Cowley, Times journalist, literary editor of the New Statesman 'This debut ensnares the reader from the first page and lingers in the memory!in soft, searing voice, Adichie examines the complexities of family, faith and country through the haunted but hopeful eyes of a young girl on the cusp of womanhood.' Publishers Weekly

Guardian

`Adjoa Andoh's characterisation of the narrator, whose confused love/hate relationship with her father underpins the story, is stunning.' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The Times

'It's a mature coming-of-age story, and an engrossing portrait of Nigerian society.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Sunday Times

`Adjoa Andoh's ear for the characterful eccentricities of Nigerian speech gives the beautifully described contemporary African world a lively pulse' 

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

Longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize Shortlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize A haunting tale of an Africa and an adolescence undergoing tremendous changes by a talented young Nigerian writer. The limits of fifteen-year-old Kambili's world are defined by the high walls of her family estate and the dictates of her repressive and fanatically religious father. Her life is regulated by schedules: prayer, sleep, study, and more prayer. When Nigeria begins to fall apart during a military coup, Kambili's father, involved mysteriously in the political crisis, sends Kambili and her brother away to live with their aunt. In this house, full of energy and laughter, she discovers life and love -- and a terrible, bruising secret deep within her family. Centring on the promise of freedom and the pain and exhilaration of adolescence, Purple Hibiscus is the extraordinary debut of a remarkable new talent.

About the Author

Image of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Author | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. Her first novel 'Purple Hibiscus' was published in 2003 and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her second novel 'Half of a Yellow Sun' won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her work has been selected by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and the BBC Short Story Awards and has appeared in various literary publications, including Zoetrope and The Iowa Review.



  • Book Details
  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Harper Perennial; New Ed edition (7 Feb 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007189885
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007189885
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.4 cm

Delta Nigeria - The Rape of Paradise | George Osodi

Delta Nigeria: The Rape of Paradise



For more than five centuries the fortunes of the Niger Delta have been closely tied to that of the global economy. For its slave ports, then palm oil industry, and most recently, through the discovery of crude oil in the 1950s. Oil multinationals soon came to the fore, working in alliance with a local elite to strip the region of its wealth and despoil it. At the receiving end are the region's impoverished inhabitants: left with a poisoned environment, faced with a government that never cares and victims of rival armed militant groups laying claim to territories. George Osodi is an internationally acclaimed Nigerian photographer, who has spent over six years documenting his country, hoping to bring attention to not only the rest of the world, but the people of Nigeria, what is happening. A country still so rich in natural resources and beauty, but where many of its people have been left with nothing.


About the Photographer


George Osodi at galerie-herrmann.com in Germany


George Osodi is a Nigerian photographer from Lagos. His photographs range between photojournalism and artistic documentary, closely observing social, economic and ecological processes of exploitation. He was chosen to be part of the prestigious Documenta art fair in 2007.


Book Details:

  • Hardcover: 248 pages
  • Publisher: Trolley; illustrated edition edition (31 Oct 2011)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1904563856
  • ISBN-13: 978-1904563853
  • Product Dimensions: 26 x 20 x 2.8 cm

Here is a Youtube slideshow of George Osodi's work: