Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the
large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican
missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and graduated from University
College, Ibadan. His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966,
when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in
Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War.
Achebe joined the Biafran Ministry of Information and represented
Biafra on various diplomatic and fund-raising missions. He was
appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria,
Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad. For over fifteen years,
he was the Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and
Literature at Bard College. He was the David and Marianna Fisher
University Professor and professor of Africana studies at Brown
University. Chinua Achebe wrote over twenty books - novels, short
stories, essays and collections of poetry - and received numerous
honours from around the world, including the Honourary Fellowship
of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as honourary
doctorates from more than thirty colleges and universities. He
wasalso the recipient of Nigeria's highest award for intellectual
achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007, he won the
Man Booker International Prize for Fiction. He died in 2013.
Maya Jaggi is a journalist and critic, and is known as an expert on
postcolonial literatures. She is a feature writer and lead reviewer
for the Guardian. Born in London and educatedat Oxford University
and the London School of Economics, she was formerly literary
editor of the journal Third World Quarterly.
"[The writer] in whose company the prison walls fell down' Nelson Mandela "The Founding Father of the African novel in English" - The Guardian
"[The writer] in whose company the prison walls fell down' Nelson Mandela "The Founding Father of the African novel in English" - The Guardian
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