Looking beyond Biafra, facing Nigeria’s posterity: A review of Chinua Achebe’s "There was a country"

Abstract

This is a review of Chinua Achebe's "There was a Country". The intellectual uproar that greeted the Chinua Achebe's masterpiece was what triggered my attention and spurred my interest to flip through the pages of the book. When I first heard of a historical account of the most trying period in the history of Nigeria, the Biafra war, published by a renowned author, I thought, "finally, someone has risen to the challenge of uniting Nigeria against the ethnic divides that led to the war in the wake of 1966." I thought Chinua Achebe had tried to recreate the history of his motherland, Nigeria, and used the civil war as a tool to reintegrate Nigeria since he belonged to the generation of writers in Africa that was preoccupied with recreating the history of their individual countries to correct the negative impression created by the white colonialists that Africa or Nigeria had no civilization before their arrival. I was, however, rather disappointed because he concentrated too much on the ethnic divides. This is rather disheartening and very unbecoming of a first-generation writer and nationalist in Nigeria.