Chinua Achebe, There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Herbert Ekwe Ekwe (UNIFOR - Universidade de Fortaleza)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.2.3: Anglophone African Writing and Culture: Subsaharan.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Dates

First circulation or publication Sep 2012

Places

Nigeria (Country of Origin)
United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)
United States (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Historical representation
Non-Fiction
- Memoir

Resources

Chinua Achebe is Africa’s foremost novelist and one of the African World’s most outstanding intellectuals. The 1958 publication of his classic, Things Fall Apart,underscores the African-centred thrust of Achebe’s esteemed literary journey. In There was a Country, Achebe revisits the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa. It is also Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century, in which 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s population were murdered. Achebe himself narrowly escaped capture by the genocidist army in Lagos where he worked as director of the external service of Nigeria’s public broadcasting corporation.

Safely …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2085 words

Citation: Ekwe Ekwe, Herbert. "There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 October 2012 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34707, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Save this article