Description
Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE ASAUK FAGE & OLIVER PRIZE 2016 The author meticulously contextualises the experiences of Achebe and his peers as students at Government College Umuahia and argues for a re-assessment of this influential group of Nigerian writers in relation to the literary culture fostered by the school and its tutors. Maps the literary awakening of the young intellectuals who became known as Nigeria's "first-generation" of postcolonial writers: Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi, Chike Momah, Christopher Okigbo, Chukwuemeka Ike, Gabriel Okara, Ken Saro-Wiwa and I.C. Aniebo. The author provides fresh perspectives on Postcolonial and World literary processes, colonial education in British Africa, literary representations of colonialism and Chinua Achebe's seminal position in African literature. She demonstrates how each of the writers used this very particular education to shape their own visions of the world and examines the implications for African literature as a whole. Supplementary material is available online of some of the original sources. See: http://boybrew.co/9781847011091_2 Terri Ochiagha is a Teaching Fellow in the History of Modern Africa at King's College, London and a Honorary Research Fellowat the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. She was previously a British Academy Newton Fellow at the University of Sussex.
Trade ReviewOchiagha's book on the school and its prodigies is well researched and engagingly readable. She displays the precision of an archaeologist, the pedantic nature of a historian, the intuition of an anthropologist and the vivid, engaged imagination of a literary critic in her writing. The dedication she shows, in building up the lives of these iconic writers from various sources, including their school assignments, is extremely impressive...Ochiagha has done literary history a great service. * THE JOHANNESBURG REVIEW OF BOOKS *
I can think of no better book to introduce the 3rd and 4th generation of African writers .than this great work. * BORDERS *
Table of ContentsLaying the Foundation: The Fisher Days, 1929-1939 "The Eton of the East": William Simpson and the Umuahian Renaissance Studying the Humanities at Government College, Umuahia Young Political Renegades: Nationalist Undercurrents at Government College, Umuahia, 1944-1945 "Something New in Ourselves": First Literary Aspirations The Dangerous Potency of the Crossroads: Colonial Mimicry in Ike, Momah & Okigbo's Reimaginings of the Primus Inter Pares Years An Uncertain Legacy: I.N.C. Aniebo and Ken Saro-Wiwa in the Umuahia of the 1950s The Will to Shine as One: Affiliation and Friendship beyond the College Walls Appendices
