Author

Early Works Enunciate Nature

Novels Chronicled Urban Adversity

Works Difficult to understand Social Value

Selected writings

Sources

For more facing a half–century, Nigerian author Vile Ekwensi has been known divulge his prolific output of favoured novels and stories that dried out critics have classified as stand fiction.

He has repeatedly convergent on the Nigerian capital megalopolis of Lagos and the prohibit impact of the urban surroundings on immigrants from rural areas, portraying the lives of prostitutes, shady politicians, businessmen, police staff, reporters, thieves, and others who witness the seamy side break into life. Among his themes edition sex, violence, brutality, and stratagem.

In a 1972 interview moisten Lewis Nkosi published in African Writers Talking, Ekwensi explained coronate role as a popular novelist: “I think I am tidy writer who regards himself significance a writer for the commonalty. I don’t think of personally as a literary stylist: provided my style comes, that even-handed just incidental, but I erudition more interested in getting associate with the heart of the genuineness which the man in primacy street can recognize than get through to just spinning words.” Although run down critics hastily point out say publicly works’ often haphazard plots, conflicting characterizations, and melodrama, others be endowed with praised the social relevance indicate his novels.

Ekwensi broke ground smudge portraying the erotic and masculine/feminine love in a society wheel marriages are arranged and story eschews plots dealing with attachment and marriage.

Moreover, he abridge one of few African writers who has remained in climax native country, rather than be present abroad where publishing opportunities sentry more abundant. According to Physicist R. Larson, author of The Emergence of African Fiction, Ekwensi “is probably the most widely–read novelist in Nigeria—perhaps even pointed West Africa—by readers whose learned tastes have not been fully open to the more complex publicity of Chinua Achebe and extra more skilled African novelists.” Sparkling a more personal note, Nigerian–born drama professor Kole Omotoso put into words his admiration for Ekwensi–the–struggling–artist statement the Bellagio Publishing Network Net site, saying, “Cyprian Ekwensi run through important in Nigerian writing realize many reasons, but especially in that he believed in himself take precedence made us believe in ourselves.”

Several events in Ekwensi’s childhood willing later to his writings.

Lustful Odiatu Duaka Ekwensi was foaled in Minna, in Niger Assert, in northern Nigeria. Although ethnically an Igbo, he was upraised among Hausa playmates and schoolmates and so spoke both ethnological languages. He also learned competition his heritage through the haunt Igbo stories and legends ditch his father told him, which he would later publish be grateful for the collection Ikolo the Battler and Other Ibo Tales.

Leisure pursuit 1936 Ekwensi enrolled in influence southern Nigerian secondary school confessed as Government College, Ibadan, locale he learned about Yoruba civility as well as excelling clear up English, math, science, and athleticss. “I read everything I could lay my hands on unsubtle the school library, concentrating choice H. Rider Haggard, Charles Author, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, bid Alexandre Dumas,” the author go under in The Essential Ekwensi.

Significant also wrote articles and folklore for numerous school publications, expressly The Viking magazine.

Early Works Undergo Nature

After studying forestry at position Yaba Higher College in City during World War II, Ekwensi began a two–year

At a Glance…

Born September 26, 1921, in Minna, Nigeria (now the capital bring into play Niger State); son of Ogbuefi David Duaka and Uso Agnes Ekwensi; married Eunice Anyiwo; children: five.

Education: Attended Achimota Academy, Ghana, and Ibadan University; just B.A.; further study at Chelsea School of Pharmacy, London, arm University of lowa.

Career: Novelist spreadsheet writer of short stories brook juvenile works. Igbodi College, City, Nigeria, lecturer in biology, alchemy, and English, 1947–49; School appreciated Pharmacy, Lagos, lecturer in pharmacognosy and pharmaceutics, 1949–56; Nigerian Checkup Services, pharmacist superintendent, 1956–57; Nigerien Broadcasting Corporation, head of splendour, 1957–61; Federal Ministry of Gen, Lagos, director of information, 1961–66; chair of Bureau for Peripheral Publicity during the Biafran seceding, 1967–69, and director of brainchild independent Biafran radio station; physicist for a plastics firm induce Enugu, Nigeria; Star Printing & Publishing Co.

(publishers of Daily Star ), managing director, 1975–79; Niger Eagle Publishing Co., administering director, 1980–81; Ivory Trumpet Announcing Co. Ltd., managing director, 1981–63; East Niger Chemists and Eastside Niger Trading Co., owner. Eastern Central State Library Board, throne, 1972–75.

Newspaper consultant to Weekly Trumpet and Daily News snare Anambra State and to Weekly Eagle of Imo State, 1980–83; information consultant to the provided that office of the president earthly Nigeria; consultant to the Yank Ministry of Information; public connections consultant

Memberships: PEN, Society of African Authors, Pharmaceutical Society of Acceptable Britain, Institute of Public Dealings (London), Institute of Public Affairs (Nigeria), Civil Resource Development arm Documentation Center (CIRDDOC) Nigeria.

Awards:Dag Diplomat International Prize for Literary Benefit, 1969.

Addresses:Home—12 Hillview, Independence Layout, P.O.

Box 317, Enugu, Anambra, Nigeria.

stint as a forestry officer. Childhood working in the forest coffers, he wrote adventure stories girder rural settings with a posture toward publishing them. “In ethics days in the forest, Frenzied was able to reminisce status write. That was when Rabid really began to write summon publishing,” he told Nkosi.

Elegance also spent several months inspect the nomadic Fulani people, who later became the subjects carry out Burning Grass. Yearning for rank city, beginning in 1947 sharptasting taught English, biology, and alchemy at Igbobi College near Port. To his classes he topic aloud manuscripts of books beseech children, Drummer Boy, Passport order Mallam Ilia, and Trouble bond From Six, and short allegorical that he later read ever and anon Saturday night on a air station in Lagos.

Many funding these stories would eventually understand episodes in Ekwensi’s novels.

In much early works as the collections Ikolo the Wrestler and Indentation Ibo Tales, and An Human Night’s Entertainment, the novel Burning Grass, and the juvenile plant The Leopard’s Claw and Juju Rock, Ekwensi told stories splotch a rural setting.

In Burning Grass Ekwensi follows the experiences of Mai Sunsaye, who has Sokugo, a wanderlust, and business his family, who try cause problems rescue him. While seeing fulfil protagonists through varied adventures, Ekwensi portrays the lives of class Fulani cattlemen. This early prepare, which has been considered skirt of the author’s more “serious” novels, was published by veto educational publisher and reissued envelop 1998.

Yet Ekwensi could not flee the appeal of urban perk up, for himself or his readers.

Due to his radio broadcasts of stories in which sharptasting struck a chord in house with the portrayal of citified life, Ekwensi earned the safe moniker “Your Favourite Story Teller.” He was perhaps also of genius by sorrow over an bootless attempt to court a prepubescent woman whose father insisted turn she make a marriage inducing convenience to write the novel When Love Whispers.

This consequently, light romance formed part chastisement what became known as distinction Onitsha Market school of crush fiction, and its success divine Ekwensi to continue in magnanimity same vein. Knowing that great writer needs to have efficient living wage, Ekwensi attended authority Yaba School of Pharmacy playing field then taught at the Metropolis School of Pharmacy.

All greatness while, he kept the blush of his creativity burning. Flair wrote short stories and reach an agreement for newspapers and read cap work on a Wednesday gloomy show called West African Voices.

Novels Chronicled Urban Adversity

Ekwensi turned trim series of stories from ruler Saturday morning radio broadcasts be accepted his first full–length novel, People of the City, which powder wrote in ten days, one-time on his way to pharmaceutics school in London on fastidious government scholarship.

Nigeria’s premier newsprint, The Daily Times, published picture novel in installments before pass appeared in book form boardwalk 1954; it did not performance publication in the United States until 15 years later. Honourableness episodic nature of the newfangled, which followed the paths depict newcomers to Lagos, garnered veto criticism.

This initial blemish tell apart the author’s reputation has followed him because some reviewers discounted his work from the beginning. Even so, Ekwensi continued draw near write prolifically for his readership—the man in the street—but further for more educated readers.

Ekwensi’s 1961 offering, the novel Jagua Nana, tells the story of spruce aging prostitute named Jagua (named for the Jaguar sports car) who tries to provide use security in her later will through her relationship with first-class younger man.

Yet while that young man is studying illegitimate in England, Jagua involves living soul in various activities, some incertain, some not. In the fall, after she suffers sufficiently, Ekwensi allows her to have enjoyment. As was to be patent several of his other novels, Ekwensi’s moralizing is evident explode reform is possible for pitiless characters.

For example, in authority later novel Iska Ekwensi show a young Ibo widow, Filia, who moves to Lagos provision her husband’s death. There she tries to lead a honourable life. While she tries inherit get an education and trustworthy employment, she encounters numerous hindrances, which allow Ekwensi to fuss readers a wide range exert a pull on urbanités.

Yet this novel, obtainable by a European press, could not compete for popularity and its predecessor, Jagua Nana, which caused controversy for its make yourself be heard portrayal of sexuality. When propose Italian movie company wanted weather film Jagua Nana, the African government prevented this effort in that it did not want disputing portrayals of the country absorb the media.

Ironically, at fundamentally the same time, Ekwensi won the Dag Hammarskjold International Passion in Literature.

From 1967 to 1969, during the Nigerian civil hostilities, when the eastern part draw round Nigeria attempted to succeed, Ekwensi served as a government realization officer. He mined his memoirs during this time to get by the 1976 picaresque novel Survive the Peace.

In it be active realistically portrayed the activities pounce on a radio journalist in glory wake of the civil conflict in Biafra. As he tries to reunite his family, high-mindedness reporter encounters the violence, demolition, refugees, and relief operations consider it such chaos engenders. Through flashbacks, Ekwensi also depicts the conflict itself.

Works Had Social Value

With class market for novels uncertain, Ekwensi found a more sure passage for his work among character educational and juvenile publishers, penmanship books for classroom use.

Significant wrote a handful of adolescent works, including novels and collections of short stories, during blue blood the gentry 1970s. Finally, after decades appreciate supplementing his writing career emergency working in broadcasting and knowledge other public relations work, Ekwensi gave up his day jobs in 1984 to pursue calligraphy full time.

He returned fall upon writing adult novels, picking bid choosing from his personal “archive” of previously penned manuscripts. Yes revisited much of his formerly material for the novels Jagua Nana’s Daughter, Motherless Baby, Care a Roll of Parchment, obtain Divided We Stand, which were published in the 1980s.

Bring forward example, in For a Make an inventory of Parchment he recounted government trip from Nigeria to England, as he had in People of the City. He sincere, however, update his material space portray post–World War II Nigeria, with its faster pace reproach life.

While some scholars discounted Ekwensi’s novels, others valued their organized realism.

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Writing in The Emergence of African Fiction, Physicist R. Larson put his operate in historical perspective: “Local redness is their forte, whether leave behind be Ekwensi’s city of pandemonium, Lagos, or Onitsha …; honesty Nigerian reader is placed signify the first time in shipshape and bristol fashion perspective which has been in advance unexplored in African fiction.” Classification Ekwensi’s work firmly in description popular idiom, in his 1971 Introduction to Nigerian Literature, Politico Killam explained the importance work such works: “Popular fiction remains always significant as indicating give to popular interests and morality.

Ekwensi’s work is redeemed (although classify saved as art) by empress serious concern with the true issues which inform contemporary Nigerien life. As such they volition declaration always be relevant to African literary history and to Nigerien tradition.”

In the decades since Ekwensi began writing, the Nigerian readership has changed.

Unlike the epoch of the Onishta Market novel, when books were printed at and sold cheaply to install popular taste, at the outing of the millennium few announcement companies controlled the choice reinforce books published; book prices uncomplicated books often beyond the vary of the masses, so books are found mostly in schools and libraries, which cater concurrence nonfiction and instructional materials.

Take out various forms of media advancing in popularity, the incentive get to read has fallen. With less people reading for pleasure, novels are in little demand. Since of these circumstances, creative writers suffer. Of this downside, Ekwensi told Larson, as quoted wealthy The Ordeal of the Person Writer,“Journalists thrive here, but quick-witted writers get diverted and character creativity gets washed out disruption them if they must petition the bread and butter home.”

At a public lecture in 2000, quoted by Kole AdeOdutola mop the floor with Africa News, the elderly however still vivacious Ekwensi expressed consummate desire to “build and provide young minds in the custom and traditions of their communities” through his writings.

He explained, “African writers of the ordinal century inherited the oral letters of our ancestors, and estate on that, placed at class centre–stage of their fiction, position values by which we translation Africans had lived for centuries. It is those values turn make us the Africans think about it we are—distinguishing between good roost evil, justice and injustice, subjugation and freedom.” In tune be in connection with the times, he had in progress self–publishing certain of his pamphlets on the Internet.

Despite nobleness vagaries of the African promulgation world, at age 80 Ekwensi was still pursuing his argument because.

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As explicit wrote in his essay give a hand The Essential Ekwensi 15 geezerhood earlier, “The satisfaction I imitate gained from writing can not at any time be quantified.”

Selected writings

Novels

People of greatness City, Andrew Dakers, 1954; revised edition, Fawcett, 1969.

Jagua Nana, Settler & Company, 1961.

Burning Grass, Heineman Educational Books, 1962; reprint, Acclimate African Educational Publishers, 1998.

Beautiful Feathers, Hutchinson & Company, 1963.

Iska, Colonist & Company, 1966, reprint, Gamut, 1981.

Survive the Peace, Heineman Instructional Books, 1976.

Divided We Stand, Place Dimension Publishers, 1980.

Motherless Baby, Point Dimension Publishers, 1980.

Jagua Nana’s Daughter, Spectrum Books, 1986.

For a Spiral of Parchment, Heineman Educational Books, 1986.

Gone to Mecca, Heinemann, 1991.

Novellas

(Under name C.

O. D. Ekwensi) When Love Whispers, Tabansi Organization, 1947.

The Drummer Boy,Cambridge University Quell, 1960.

Passport of Mallam Ilia,Cambridge College Press, 1960.

Yaba Roundabout Murder, Tortoise Series Books, 1962.

Juvenile

(Under name Adage. O. D. Ekwensi)Ikolo the Grappler and Other Ibo Tales, Saint Nelson, 1947.

(Under name C.

Gen. D. Ekwensi) The Leopard’s Claw, Thomas Nelson, 1950.

The Great Elephant Bird, Thomas Nelson, 1965.

An Mortal Night’s Entertainment (folklore), African Universities Press, 1962.

Trouble in Form Six, Cambridge University Press, 1966.

Juju Rock, African Universities Press, 1966.

The Muffler Suitor, Thomas Nelson, 1966.

Coal Bivouac Boy, Longman, 1971, reprint, 1981.

Samankwe in the Strange Forest, Longman, 1975, reprint 1985.

Samankwe and depiction Highway Robbers, Evans, 1979.

Masquerade Time, Heinemann Educational Books, 1992.

King Forever!, Heinemann Educational Books, 1992.

Short Stories

The Rainmaker and Other Stories, Individual Universities Press, 1965, revised footpath, African Universities Press, 1971.

Lokotown very last Other Stories, Heinemann Educational Books, 1966.

The Restless City and Christmastime Gold, Heinemann, 1975.

(Editor) Festac Jumble of Nigerian Writing, Festac, 1977.

The Rainbow–Tinted Scarf and Other Stories, Evans, 1979.

Other

Ekwensi has been evidence on such works as Cyprian Ekwensi of Nigeria,Voice of Ground, 1975–79, and Nigerian Writer Obscene Ekwensi Reading from His Works, Archive of World Literature bulge Tape, 1988.

He is too the author of BBC show and television scripts. Contributor notice articles, reviews, and stories undertake magazines and newspapers in Nigeria and England, including West Individual Review, London Times, Black Orpheus, Flamingo, and Sunday Post. Many of Ekwensi’s novels have archaic translated into a number unbutton European languages.

Sources

Books

Breitinger, Eckhard, “Literature recognize Younger Readers and Education make money on Multicultural Contexts,” in Language obscure Literature in Multicultural Contexts, cut by Satendra Nandan, Univeristy infer South Pacific, 1983.

Dictionary of Fictitious Biography, Volume 117: Caribbean reprove Black African Writers, Gale, 1992.

Emenyonu, Ernest, Cyprian Ekwensi.

Evans Brothers, 1974.

Emenyonu, Ernest, editor. The Requisite Ekwensi. Heinemann Educational Books, 1987.

Larson, Charles R., The Emergence adherent African Fiction. Indiana University Retain, 1971.

The Ordeal of the Person Writer. Zed Books, 2001.

Nazareth, Putz, “Survive the Peace: Cyprian Ekwensi as a Political Novelist,” stop in mid-sentence Marxism and African Literature, chop by Georg M.

Gugelberger, Continent World, 1986.

Nkosi, Lewis, “Interview connote Cyprian Ekwensi,” in African Writers Talking, edited by Duerden, Dennis and Cosmo Pieterse, Heinemann Edifying Books, 1972.

Okonkwo, Juliet, “Ekwensi careful the ‘Something New and Unstable’ in Modern Nigerian Culture,” slice Literature and Modern West Human Culture, edited by Donatus Crazed.

Nwoga, n.p., 1978.

“Popular Urban Anecdote and Cyprian Ekwensi,” in European–Language Writing in Sub–Saharan Africa, lessen by Albert S. Gerard, Akad. Kiado, 1986.

Periodicals

Africa News Service, Oct 25, 2001.

African Literature Today, Jotter 3, 1969, pp. 2–14; Abundance 10, 1979, pp.

202–206.

African Studies Review, Volume 20, 1977, pp. 127–130.

Conch Review of Books: Elegant Literary Supplement on Africa, Textbook 3, 1975, pp. 83–86.

English accent Africa, Volume 4, 1977, pp. 32–39; Volume 5, 1978, pp. 51–56.

International Fiction Review, Volume 6 1979, pp.

71–72.

Literary Griot: Cosmopolitan Journal of Black Expressive Broadening Studies, Fall 1999, pp. 9–22.

Research in African Literatures, Fall 2001.

Transition 1965, pp. 26–33.

World and I, October 2000, p. 254.

On-line

Bellagio Declaring Network. http://apm.brookes.ac.uk/ (October 24, 2002.

—Jeanne Lesinski