Achebe and Friends at Umuahia: The Making of a Literary Elite

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 Fellow at 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.
WINNER 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.