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Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart
Product
Details:
ISBN: 0385474547
Format: Paperback, 212pp
Pub. Date: September 1994
Annotation: A classic of modern African writing, this is the tale of what happens to tribal customs and old
ways when white man comes.
From the Publisher:
Chinua Achebe's first novel portrays the collision of African and European cultures in people's
lives. Okonkwo, a great man in Igbo traditional society, cannot adapt to the profound changes brought about by British colonial
rule. Yet, as in classic tragedy, Okonkwo's downfall results from his own character as well as from external forces.
Synopsis:
The 1958 novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community, from the events
leading up to his banishment from the community for accidentally killing a clansman, through the seven years of his exile,
to his return.
Addresses the problem of the intrusion in the 1890s of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society,
and describes the simultaneous disintegration of its protagonist Okonkwo and of his village. The novel was praised for its
intelligent and realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological disintegration coincident with social unraveling.
Things Fall Apart helped create the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960s.
 0385474547:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.
No Longer at Ease
Product Details:
ISBN: 0385474555
Format:
Paperback, 194pp
Pub. Date: September 1994
From the Publisher:
The story of a man whose foreign education has separated him from his African roots and
made him parts of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. More than thirty years after it was first written, this
novel remains a brilliant statement on the challenges still facing African society.
 
No Longer at Ease
A Grain of Wheat
Product Details:
ISBN: 0435909878
Format:
Paperback, 247pp
Pub. Date: January 1994
From the Publisher:
In this ambitious and densely worked novel, we begin to see early signs of Ngugi's increasing
bitterness about the ways in which the politicians are the true benefactors of the rewards of independence.  A Grain of Wheat
Anthills of the Savannah
Product Details:
ISBN: 0385260458
Format:
Paperback, 216pp
Pub. Date: January 1989
From The Critics:
USA Today
Achebe moves effortlessly... creating a flurry of perspectives from which his story's
dramatic and disturbing events are scrutinized. Anthills Of The Savannah... will prove hard to forget. It's a vision of social
change that strikes us with the force of prophecy.
Book World Washington Post
Achebe has written a story that sidesteps both ideologies of the African experience and
political agendas, in order to lead us to a deeply human universal wisdom.
New York Review of Books
. . .has wonderful satiric moments and resounds with big African laughter.
Publisher's Weekly
A portrait of a West African military coup leader and his moral deterioration. This bitterly ironic
novel by the Nigerian author
of Things Fall Apart is at times more of a polemic than dramatic narrative, but it presents a candid, trenchantly insightful
view of contemporary Africa.  0385260458:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.
A Man of the People
Product Details:
ISBN: 0385086164
Format:
Paperback, 150pp
Pub. Date: September 1975
From the Publisher:
By the renowned author of Things Fall Apart, this novel foreshadows the Nigerian coups of
1966 and shows the color and vivacity as well as the violence and corruption of a society making its own way between the two
worlds.  
A Man of the People
Arrow of God
Product Details:
ISBN: 0385014805
Format: Paperback,
230pp
Pub. Date: September 1975
From the Publisher:
Set in the Ibo heartland of eastern Nigeria, one of Africa's best-known writers describes
the conflict between old and new in its most poignant aspect: the personal struggle between father and son.  
Arrow of God
Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories
Product Details:
ISBN:
038541479X
Format: Paperback, 186pp
Pub. Date: September 1990
From the Publisher:
Chinua Achebe's first novel portrays the collision of African and European cultures in people's
lives. Okonkwo, a great man in Igbo traditional society, cannot adapt to the profound changes brought about by British colonial
rule. Yet, as in classic tragedy, Okonkwo's downfall results from his own character as well as from external forces.
From The Critics:
Publisher's Weekly
Achebe's powerful critique of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a
racist mirror of Eurocentric attitudes leads off this challenging collection of essays on art, literature and social issues.
The famed Nigerian novelist ( Things Fall Apart ) views literature as a medium that can help Africa regain a belief in itself
to replace a posture of self-abasement instilled by its traumatic historical encounter with the West. Tributes to novelists
Amos Tutuola and Kofi Awoonor, as well as discerning appraisals of writers such as V. S. Naipaul and James Baldwin, reflect
his belief in the power of fiction to give us a ``handle
on reality.''Overall, these concise essays deliver a forceful commentary on Afro-American life and letters. Summing up
Nigeria's recent sociopolitical history as ``a snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory,'' Achebe calls active participation
in the political process a prerequisite for his country's, and Africa's, regeneration. (Oct.)  038541479X:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.
African Short Stories
Chinua Achebe, C. L. Innes (Editor)
Product Details:
ISBN: 0435905368
Format: Paperback,
159pp
Pub. Date: March 1988
From the Publisher:
A selection of the best African stories written between 1960 and 1985.
African Short Stories
Frantz Fanon
Wretched of the Earth
Product
Details:
ISBN: 0802150837 Format: Paperback, 316pp Pub. Date: May 1976 Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Barnes & Noble Sales
Rank: 11,684
From the Publisher:
A distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique who took part in the Algerian Nationalist Movement, Frantz Fanon was one of the
most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. Fanon's masterwork is a
classic alongside Edward Said's Orientalism or The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and it is now available in a new translation
that updates its language for a new generation of readers. The Wretched of the Earth is a brilliant analysis of the psychology
of the colonized and their path to liberation. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples,
and the role of violence in effecting historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post independence
colonial politics:the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities
on the other. Fanon's analysis, a veritable handbook of social reorganization for leaders of emerging nations, has been reflected
all too clearly in the corruption and violence that has plagued present-day Africa. The Wretched of the Earth has had a major
impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world, and this bold new translation
by Richard Philcox reaffirms it as a landmark. 
Wretched of the Earth
Black Skin, White Masks
Product Details:
ISBN: 0802150845
Format:
Paperback, 232pp
Pub. Date: May 1976 Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Barnes & Noble Sales Rank: 17,376  
Black Skin, White Masks
Toward the African Revolution
Product Details:
ISBN: 0802130909
Format:
Paperback, 208pp
Pub. Date: May 1988
From the Publisher:
This powerful collection of articles, essays, and letters spans the period between Black Skin,
White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon's landmark manifestos on the psychology of the colonized and the means of
empowerment necessary for their liberation.  
Toward the African Revolution
A Dying Colonialism
Product Details:
ISBN:
0802150276
Format: Paperback, 181pp
Pub. Date: August 1993  
A Dying Colonialism
Wole Soyinka
Playwright, poet, and novelist
Biography:
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. See Nobel Prize
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Ken Saro Wiwa
A Forest of Flowers
Product Details:
ISBN: 9782460044
Format:
Paperback, 151pp
Pub. Date: January 1986
From the Publisher:
A Forest of Flowers is a collection of nineteen short stories which explore the absurdity
of life for characters whose ambitions, modest as they are, are constantly thwarted by disgruntled spirits - in the form of
idle and corrupt officials, adulterous spouses, envious relatives and grasping, untrustworthy entrepreneurs. Through a series
of episodes, seemingly parochial and small scale, a nation is shown cracking up under the pressures of maladministration,
corporate greed, sloth, ignorance and mercenary self-interest, while its people struggle against government neglect and abuse,
racketeering, poverty, disease, superstition and ethnic mistrust.
 A Forest of Flowers
 
A Forest of Flowers (Longman African Writers Series)
Lemonas Geschichte
Product Details:
ISBN: 3423241756
Format:
Paperback, 216pp Publisher: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag
Edition Description: German Edition  
Lemonas Geschichte
Mr B Goes to Lagos
Product Details:
ISBN: 1870716051
Format:
Paperback, 48pp
Pub. Date: December 1989
Mr B Goes to Lagos
The Adaku and Other Stories
Product Details:
ISBN: 9782460095
Format:
Paperback, 277pp
Pub. Date: December 1990  The Adaku and Other Stories
Basi and Company
Product Details:
ISBN: 1870716000
Format:
Paperback, 216pp
Pub. Date: January 1987
Basi and Company
Four Farcical Plays
Product Details:
ISBN: 1870716094
Format:
Paperback
Pub. Date: January 1985  Four Farcical Plays
Wole Soyinka
Ake: The Years of Childhood
Product
Details:
ISBN: 0679725407
Format: Paperback, 230pp
Pub. Date: September 1983
"...a classic of African autobiography, indeed a classic of childhood memories..."--New York Times Book Review
 
Ake: The Years of Childhood
Open Sore of a Continent
A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis
Product Details:
ISBN: 0195119215
Format: Paperback, 176pp
Pub. Date: August 1997
Synopsis: A firsthand account of the devolving political system in Nigeria. 
Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis
The Lion and the Jewel
Product Details:
ISBN: 0199110832
Format:
Paperback, 65pp
Pub. Date: November 1990 From the Publisher: This is one of the best-known plays by Africa's major
dramatist, Wole Soyinka. How the Lion hunts the Jewel is the theme of this ribald comedy.  The Lion and the Jewel
Death and the King`s Horseman
Product Details:
ISBN: 0393322998
Format:
Paperback, 77pp
Pub. Date: April 2002 Annotation: Examines the explosive tension between the traditional African culture
and the West. From the Publisher: This Norton Critical Edition of Death and the King's Horseman is the only student edition
available in the United States. Based on events that took place in 1946 in the ancient Yoruban city of Oyo, Soyinka's acclaimed
and powerful play addresses classic issues of cultural conflict, tragic decision-making, and the psychological mindsets of
individuals and groups. The text of the play is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory annotations for the many allusions
to traditional Nigerian myth and culture. Included are a map of Yorubaland, discussions of Yoruban religious beliefs and cultural
traditions. Soyinka on the various forms that theater has taken in African culture in order to survive, and Anthony Appiah
on Soyinka's struggle with the problem of African identity in the creation of Death and the King's Horseman. Commentary on
the play as both a theatrical production and a classroom text is provided. 
Death and the King's Horseman
Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness
Product Details:
ISBN:
0195134281
Format: Paperback, 224pp
Pub. Date: December 1999 From the Publisher: Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka considers
all of Africa - indeed, all the world - as he poses the question: Once repression stops, is reconciliation between oppressor
and victim possible? In the face of centuries long devastations wrought on the African continent and her Diaspora by slavery,
colonialism, Apartheid and the manifold faces of racism, what form of recompense could possibly be adequate? In a voice as
eloquent and humane as it is forceful, Soyinka examines this fundamental question as he illuminates the principle duty and
"near intolerable burden" of memory to bear the record of injustice. In so doing, he challenges notions of simple forgiveness,
of confession and absolution, as strategies for social healing. Ultimately, he turns to art as one source that may nourish
the seed of reconciliation, art as the generous vessel that can hold together the burden of memory and the hope of forgiveness.
 Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness
Madmen and Specialists
Product Details:
ISBN: 080901226X
Format:
Paperback, 96pp
Pub. Date: September 1987 Annotation: "...A wholesale criticism of life in Nigeria since the Civel
War..."--New York Times. 
Madmen and Specialists
Myth, Literature, and the African World
Product Details: ISBN: 0521398347 Format: Paperback, 168pp Pub. Date: February 1991 From the Publisher: The ways in which
the African world perceives itself as a cultural whole that interconnects myth, ritual and literature and the differences
between its essential unity and the sense of division pervading Western literature are emphasized in this classic analysis.
Myth, Literature, and the African World
Leopold Sedar Senghor
Leopold Sedar Senghor: The Collected Poetry Melvin Dixon (Intrduction) Product
Details: ISBN: 081391275X Format: Hardcover, 598pp Pub. Date: December 1991
From the Publisher:
Leopold Sedar Senghor was not only president of the Republic of Senegal from 1960 to 1981,
he is also Africa's most famous poet. A cofounder of the Negritude cultural movement, he is recognized as one of the most
significant figures in African literature. This bilingual edition of Senghor's complete poems made his work available for
the first time to English-speaking audiences. His poetry, alive with sensual imagery, contrasts the lushness and wonder of
Africa's past with the alienation and loss associated with assimilation into European culture. Translator Melvin Dixon places
Senghor's writing in historical perspective by relating it to both his political involvement and his intellectual development.
From The Critics:
Mason - The Times Literary Supplement
Melvin Dixon acheives that rarest of feats in the
translation of poetry: he recreates Léopold Senghor in our own tongue, exhibiting with unflagging good faith his universality
as poet of love, of nature, of war and, rarest of modern accomplishments, of praise.
 
Leopold Sedar Senghor: The Collected Poetry
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