Books about Nigeria

Nigeria has been blessed with quite a few prolific authors who have done some amazing work. I'll talk about a few here...

Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria. After preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan, he continued at the University of Leeds, where, later, in 1973, he took his doctorate. During the six years spent in England, he was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London 1958-1959. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama. At the same time, he taught drama and literature at various universities in Ibadan, Lagos, and Ife, where, since 1975, he has been professor of comparative literature. In 1960, he founded the theatre group, "The 1960 Masks" and in 1964, the "Orisun Theatre Company", in which he has produced his own plays and taken part as actor. He has periodically been visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale.

During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months untill 1969. Soyinka has published about 20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words.

As dramatist, Soyinka has been influenced by, among others, the Irish writer, J.M. Synge, but links up with the traditional popular African theatre with its combination of dance, music, and action. He bases his writing on the mythology of his own tribe-the Yoruba-with Ogun, the god of iron and war, at the centre. He wrote his first plays during his time in London, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel (a light comedy), which were performed at Ibadan in 1958 and 1959 and were published in 1963. Later, satirical comedies are The Trial of Brother Jero (performed in 1960, publ. 1963) with its sequel, Jero's Metamorphosis (performed 1974, publ. 1973), A Dance of the Forests (performed 1960, publ.1963), Kongi's Harvest (performed 1965, publ. 1967) and Madmen and Specialists (performed 1970, publ. 1971). Among Soyinka's serious philosophic plays are (apart from "The Swamp Dwellers") The Strong Breed (performed 1966, publ. 1963), The Road ( 1965) and Death and the King's Horseman (performed 1976, publ. 1975). In The Bacchae of Euripides (1973), he has rewritten the Bacchae for the African stage and in Opera Wonyosi (performed 1977, publ. 1981), bases himself on John Gay's Beggar's Opera and Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. Soyinka's latest dramatic works are A Play of Giants (1984) and Requiem for a Futurologist (1985).

Soyinka has written two novels, The Interpreters (1965), narratively, a complicated work which has been compared to Joyce's and Faulkner's, in which six Nigerian intellectuals discuss and interpret their African experiences, and Season of Anomy (1973) which is based on the writer's thoughts during his imprisonment and confronts the Orpheus and Euridice myth with the mythology of the Yoruba. Purely autobiographical are The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972) and the account of his childhood, Aké ( 1981), in which the parents' warmth and interest in their son are prominent. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World (1975).

Soyinka's poems, which show a close connection to his plays, are collected in Idanre, and Other Poems (1967), Poems from Prison (1969), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972) the long poem Ogun Abibiman (1976) and Mandela's Earth and Other Poems (1988).

Chinua Achebe

Added by Melissa Culross

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born the son of Isaiah Okafo, a Christian churchman, and Janet N. Achebe November 16, 1930 in Ogidi, Nigeria. He married Christie Chinwe Okoli, September 10, 1961, and now has four children: Chinelo, Ikechukwu, Chidi, and Nwando. He attended Government College in Umuahia from 1944 to 1947 and University College in Ibadan from 1948 to 1953. He then received a B.A. from London University in 1953 and studied broadcasting at the British Broadcasting Corp. in London in 1956.

Since the 1950's, Nigeria has witnessed "the flourishing of a new literature which has drawn sustanence from both traditional oral literature and from the present and rapidly changing society," writes Margaret Laurence in her book Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists. Thirty years ago Chinua Achebe was one of the founders of this new literature, and over the years many critics have come to consider him the finest of the Nigerian novelists. His acheivement, however, has not been limited to his continent. He is considered by many to be one of the best novelists now writing in the English language.

Unlike some African writers struggling for acceptance among contemporary English-language novelists, Achebe has been able to avoid imitating the trends in English literature. Rejecting the European notion "that art should be accountable to no one, and [needs] to justify itself to nobody," as he puts it in his book of essays, Morning Yet on Creation Day, Achebe has embraced instead the idea at the heart of the African oral tradition: that "art is, and always was, at the service of man. Our ancestors created their myths and told their stories for a human purpose." For this reason, Achebe beleives that "any good story, any good novel, should have a message, should have a purpose."

Achebe's feel for the African context has influenced his aesthetic of the novel as well as the technical aspects of his work. As Bruce King comments in Introduction to Nigerian Literature: "Achebe was the first Nigerian writer to successfully transmute the conventions of the novel, a European art form, into African literature." In an Achebe novel, King notes, "European character study is subordinated to the portrayl of communal life; European economy of form is replaced by an aesthetic appropriate to the rhythms of traditional tribal life."

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni, an ethnic minority whose homelands in the Niger Delta have been targeted for oil extraction since the 1950s. As president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent campaign against environmental damage associated with the operations of multinational oil companies, including Shell and British Petroleum.

Saro-Wiwa was also a successful businessman, novelist and television producer. His best known novel, Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English, tells the story of naive village boy recruited to the army during the Nigerian civil war (1967-1970). His war diaries, On a Darkling Plain, document Saro-Wiwa's experience during the war, when he served as the Civilian Administrator for the port of Bonny in the Niger Delta. His satirical television series, Basi & Co., is purported to have been the most watched soap opera in Africa.

In the early 1970s, Saro-Wiwa served as the Regional Commissioner for Education in the Rivers State Cabinet, but was dismissed in 1973 because of his support for Ogoni autonomy. In the late 1970s, he established a number of successful business ventures in retail and real-estate, and during the 1980s was able to concentrate on his writing, journalism and television production.

In 1990, Saro-Wiwa founded MOSOP, to advocate for the rights of the Ogoni people. The Ogoni Bill of Rights, written by MOSOP, set out the movement's demands, including increased autonomy for the Ogoni people, a fair share of the proceeds of oil extraction, and remediation of environmental damage to Ogoni lands. In 1992, Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned for several months, without trial, by the Nigerian military government.

In January 1993, MOSOP organised peaceful marches of around 300,000 Ogoni people - more than half of the Ogoni population - through four Ogoni centres, drawing international attention to his people's plight. The same year, Shell ceased operations in the Ogoni region.

Saro-Wiwa was arrested again and detained by Nigerian authorities in June 1993, but was released after a month. In May 1995, he was arrested and accused of incitement to murder following the deaths of four Ogoni elders, believed to be sympathetic to the military. Saro-Wiwa denied the charges, but was imprisoned for over a year before being found guilty and sentenced to death by a specially convened tribunal. The trial was widely criticised by human rights organisations.

A biography, In the Shadow of a Saint, was written by his son, journalist Ken Wiwa. Ken Saro-Wiwa's daugher Zina Saro-Wiwa is a filmmaker and arts journalist.

Statement made by Saro-Wiwa just before his execution

"I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is on trial here, and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learned here may prove useful to it, for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war the company has waged in the delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.

On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and all those who assist them. I am not one of those who shy away from protesting injustice and oppression, arguing that they are expected of a military regime. The military do not act alone. They are supported by a gaggle of politicians, lawyers, judges, academics and businessmen, all of them hiding under the claim that they are only doing their duty, men and women too afraid to wash their pants of their urine.

We all stand on trial, my lord, for by our actions we have denigrated our country and jeopardised the future of our children. As we subscribe to the subnormal and accept double standards, as we lie and cheat openly, as we protect injustice and oppression, we empty our classrooms, degrade our hospitals, and make ourselves the slaves of those who subscribe to higher standards, who pursue the truth, and honour justice, freedom and hard work."

Buchi Emecheta (1944- ). Nigeria.

Buchi Emecheta was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1944. Her father, a railroad worker, died when she was young, but she managed to continue her education at the Methodist Girls High School in Lagos. When she was 16, she married a student named Sylvester Onwordi, and moved to London with him. The couple had five children together before she left him in 1966. In 1970, she enrolled at the University of London, where she received an honors degree in sociology in 1974.

She began writing after her marriage ended. Most of her fiction is autobiographical (The Rape of Shavi (1983) being the most notable exception). Her first book, In the Ditch (1972), and her second, Second-Class Citizen (1974) describe the life of Adah, a woman from Nigeria who has emigrated to England with her student husband, Francis. Francis is a dreadful husband who is lazy and selfish, and considerably less intelligent than the woman he mistreats. She struggles in her marriage, both financially and sexually, and gains the will to leave her husband only after he burns the manuscript she has been writing. After she leaves him, she discovers the depth of her own intelligence and character, and begins to climb out of the &quote;ditch&quote; she had been confined to.

Emecheta's most critically acclaimed work is remarkably different from her earlier work. The Rape of Shavi (1983) is a "philosophical novel" about the encounter between Africa and the West. In it, the residents of Shavi, a fictional African country, are visited by a group of whites who survive a plane crash. The passengers were fleeing what they believed was an imminent nuclear holocaust. When they arrive in Shavi, they discover a world which is undisturbed by external political disputes or Western influence. Initially, the Shavians are not convinced that these crash victims are human. However, they give the refugees food, shelter and medical attention. Eventually, most of the new arrivals gain respect for their hosts. Unfortunately, things take a bad turn when one of the Europeans rapes Ayoko, a girl who is betrothed to the king, and gives her syphilis. Later, one of the Shavians named Asogba goes to Europe with the whites after they repair their plane. He returns power-hungry and intent on conquering nearby tribes using technology he acquired while abroad. Eventually, he marries Ayoko, who unknowingly gives him syphilis. He passes it on to his other wives, and dies childless. Shavi is initially devastated by this encounter, but its residents ultimately come away from it with an ability to understand the implications of westernization and technological advances.

Emecheta's most recent book Gwendolen (1989) describes the life of a young West Indian girl who emigrates to London with her family. It is thematically similar to her earlier novels. Some readers apparently had hoped that The Rape of Shavi had signaled a new direction in her writing, and greeted this novel with little enthusiasm.

In the Ditch. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1972.
Second-Class Citizen. London: Allison and Busby, 1974.
The Rape of Shavi. London: Ogwugwu Afor, 1983.
Gwendolen. London: Collins, 1989.
Smith, Chistopher. "Buchi Emecheta" in C. Brian Cox, ed. African Writers. vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1997.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (1932-1967) was a Nigerian poet, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. Born in the town of Ojoto, about ten miles from the city of Onitsha in the Anambra State, his father was a Catholic missionary, and Okigbo spent his early years moving from station to station. Despite his father's devout Christianity, Okigbo felt a special affinity to his maternal grandfather, a priest of Idoto, an Igbo deity personified in the river of the same name that flowed through his village. Later in life, Okigbo came to believe that his grandfather's soul was reincarnated in him, and the "water goddess" figures prominently in his work. Heavensgate(1962) opens with the compelling lines:

Before you, mother Idoto,

naked I stand,

while in "Distances" (1964) he bemoans the fact that in returning to his indigenous religious roots, that

I am the sole witness to my homecoming.

Okigbo graduated from Government College Imuahia two years after Chinua Achebe, another noted Nigerian writer, after earning himself a reputation as both a scholarly student and a competent athlete. The following year, he was accepted to University College in Ibadan, originally intending to study Medicine, though he switched to Classics in his second year. In college, he also earned himself a reputation as a pianist, and he accompanied Wole Soyinka in his first public appearance as a singer. It is believed that Okigbo also wrote original music at that time, though none of this has survived.

Upon graduating in 1956, he held a succession of jobs in various locations throughout the country, while he began to make his first forays into poetry. He worked at the Nigerian Tobacco Company, United Africa Copany, the Fiditi Grammar School, where he taught Latin, and finally as Acting Librarian at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where he helped to found the African Authors Association. During those years, he began publishing his work in various journals, notably Black Orpheus, a literary journal intended to bring together the best works of African and African American writers. Ironically, Okigbo rejected the premise of "Negritude" upon which the magazine was based, saying:

... anybody who is black now can write for Black Orpheus even though there might not in fact be any cultural meeting points between the various black peoples of the world.

From Nkussa, he was transferred to the University campus at Ibadan, where he was an active member of the Mbari literary club, and he began to publish collections of his work: Heavensgate and Limits (1964). Labyrinths, his magnum opus, was only published after his death, in 1971, and incorporates the poems from the earlier collections. Ibadan was only a temporary waystation. In 1963 he became the West African representative of Oxford University Press, a position that provided him an opportunity to travel frequently to the United Kingdom, where he attracted further attention to his emerging poetry.

In 1966 the Nigerian crisis came to a head. Okigbo, who was living in Lagos at the time, relocated to Eastern Nigeria to await the outcome of the turn of events which culminated in the secession of the eastern provinces as the independent state of Biafra on May 30, 1967. In 1966, he wrote his last work, the poem "Path of Thunder," leaving the manuscript with friends. That same year, he won the poetry prize at the Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar. Living in Enugu, he worked together with Achebe to establish a new publishing house.

With the secession of Biafra, Okigbo immediately joined the new state's military as a major, a rank given to many of the Nigerian intellectuals that rushed to support Biafra and held positions behind the lines. Okigbo, however, insisted on serving at the front. He was killed one month later, in a Nigerian assault on Nsukka. His house, with all his unpublished writing, possibly including the beginnings of a novel, was destroyed. "Elegy for Slit-Drum", a poem he had written a year earlier, seemed to many to be prophetic in the foretelling the sense of loss felt by the people of Biafra and of Africa at news of his death:

the elephant has fallen

the mortars have won the day

the elephant has fallen

does he deserve his fate

Ben Okri

Ben Okri was born in 1959 in Lagos, Nigeria. He attended Urhobo College, Warri, for a few years and later continued his education privately in Lagos. Okri claims that his childhood has significantly influenced his writing, yet he has not shared many details about his childhood because he believes that it is best explored in his fiction. Instead of providing autobiographical details, Okri prefers to talk about how reading has influenced his writing. He started by reading African, classical, and European myths, and he continued reading from his father's library of the western classics. Noting many strong similarities between these diverse cultural traditions, Okri developed a worldview that combines African and European traditions. His reading also inspired him to begin writing stories and essays while he was still in secondary school. Later he failed to get a place at a Nigerian university, so he took a job at a paint store and started publishing his writing in Nigerian women's journals and evening papers. By the time he turned eighteen, he had completed his first novel, Flowers and Shadows, and moved to England, where he attended the University of Essex. He continues to live, read, and write in London.

A writer with an active conscience, Dr. Onwueme's provocative and humorous writing and speaking often poke into taboo and controversial subjects. Her work clearly reveals the untold/unheard stories of young women and the poor who are caught in various crossfires with family, tradition, race, class, gender, culture, and the politics of living in the challenging postcolonial societies today. Her award-winning play, Shakara Dance-Hall Queen kicked off the BBC World Drama Service international broadcast for the fall season of 2004. Since joining the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 1994 as a Distinguished Professor of Cultural Diversity and Professor of English after her years of teaching in both Nigerian and American universities, Dr. Onwueme continues to serve as a role-model for women and youths through her inspirational writing and speaking that are steadily shaping and transforming public consciousness of issues impacting black women and youths in global societies today.