Almost every Nigerian child grew up reading books from the African Writers Series which include books of legendary writers like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Buchi Emecheta, Cyprian Ekwensi, Christopher Okigbo and Elechi Amadi.
Thanks to OkadaBooks, these old and priceless literary masterpieces have been brought back in style and made available digitally. Most people were brought up by the morals packed in these books; of course our parents did their parts, but so did these authors, with the powerful light of wisdom they shared in each story.
Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane:
A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, explores the life of Mugo, a young man who is haunted by a dark secret; he snitched on and caused the death of Kihika. This book projects how a betrayer, is thought to be a hero.
The Concubine by Elechi Amadi tells the story of Ihuoma, a beautiful young woman, who is admired by all in her village, but any man who got involved with her ended up dying due to the jealousy of her ‘spiritual’ husband, a sea king.
Second-Class Citizen is Buchi Emecheta’s first published and semi-autobiographical novel, based on her childhood in Lagos and early life in London with her husband before she divorced him. It tells the pitiful story of Adah, a woman who as a child, had an interest in knowledge. This interest causes her to marry a loafer out of her desperation to leave her father’s you, and this decision of marriage thus began her suffering. It basically chronicles Buchi Emecheta’s life as a married woman.
Most of these books were at some point, part of the recommended reads in literature classes at secondary school and even University level.
All of these books are more than meets-the-eyes; they are history and should be preserved forever which is why we are excited to announce that they are now available for download on OkadaBooks.
Other available books in the African Writers Series are The River Between, Weep Not, Child and Devil on the Cross by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, The House of Hunger, by Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera. There are also Lily Maburu’s How Shall We Kill the Bishop and Other Stories and Christopher Okigbo’s extraordinary and powerful collection of interlinked poems, Ladyrinths.
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