Chinua Achebe’s ‘There Was A Country’ for release in Nigeria

The long-awaited memoir, which was published on Thursday, details a personal account of the three-year Biafran war, in which the author acted as roving cultural ambassador for the Biafran Republic when the south-eastern area tried to split from Nigeria in 1967. Prof. Achebe has remained silent about his war experience for more than 40 years. […]

The long-awaited memoir, which was published on Thursday, details a personal account of the three-year Biafran war, in which the author acted as roving cultural ambassador for the Biafran Republic when the south-eastern area tried to split from Nigeria in 1967.

Prof. Achebe has remained silent about his war experience for more than 40 years.

As one of Africa’s best known authors, Achebe’s debut 1958 novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ has sold more than 10 million copies and published in numerous languages all over the world.

‘Birth pangs’

The prize-winning 81-year-old author and academic has written more than 20 works – some fiercely critical of politicians and a failure of leadership in Nigeria.

But he has never addressed the atrocities of the Biafran war, in which he was caught up with his young family – except occasionally in his poetry.

More than one million people died during the conflict in fighting and from famine – photographs of starving children from Biafra became synonymous in the media with the conflict.

“There Was a Country” is a distillation of vivid observation and considered research and reflection,” Achebe’s UK publisher Allen Lane says.

“It relates Nigeria’s birth pangs in the context of Achebe’s own development as a man and a writer, and examines the role of the artist in times of war.”

Prof Achebe has lived in the US since he suffered a car accident in 1990, which left him paralysed and in a wheelchair.

In a recent interview with an Iranian journalist, Chinua Achebe said in the book, which is a personal history of Biafra, “I tell three interweaving stories – using an autobiographical prism to recount two broader stories – the story of pre and post-independence Nigeria, and the story of Biafra and its aftermath.

“I have been asked why it took me over 42 years to write about Biafra…The answer is that I was not ready… I had to find the right vehicle that could “carry our anguish, our sorrow… the scale of dislocation and destruction…our collective pain.”In many ways, I can say that I have been writing this book for about four decades – at least in my head and the very scribbling on paper almost as long – particularly the research, interviews, data collection etc. I discovered while working on the book, quite interestingly, that it would not be a straight forward work. I found that I had to draw upon prose, poetry, history, memoir, and politics and that they were independently holding conversations with each other – perhaps because no one genre or art form could bear the weight of the complexity of our condition. You see, the Biafran war was such a cataclysmic event that in my opinion changed the course, not only of Nigeria, which has not fully recovered from that conflict; but of all of Africa. I hope …readers pick up a copy!”