Two New Books From Achebe This Fall
PROFESSOR Chinua Achebe's publishers, Knopf International (Random House/Anchor Books), have announced the release in six months of what the company is calling "A new book of autobiographical essays from the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart."
In The Education of a British Protected Child, Achebe's characteristically measured and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these 17 beautifully written pieces. He gives his reader a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its "middle ground," recalling both his happy memories of reading novels in secondary school and the harsher truths of colonial rule.
In African-American Visitations, the reader witnesses the terrifying nature of the African Diaspora and what it means not to know "from whence he came."
Politics and history figure in What Is Nigeria to Me?, Africa's Tarnished Name, and Politics of the Politicians of Language. Achebe's extraordinary family comes into view in My Dad and Me and My Daughters.
Charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise, The Education of a British-Protected Child is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.
The 208-page book will cost about $24 (hardcover); and will be in bookstores around the world on October 6. Literary editors, senior scholars, and reviewers will get copies in late July.
Notre Dame University Press has also announced the publication in the autumn of The Igbo and their Perception of God, Human Beings and Creation.
The book, a product of the third biennial Blessed Pope John XXIII Lecture Series in Theology and Culture at the University of Notre Dame on March 23, 25 and 26, 2009; is widely regarded as a either a literary departure or homecoming for Achebe. Literary critics such as Lewis Nkosi perceive this particular publication as a return to his "creative, intellectual roots. For readers who are not familiar with Achebe's background, it takes a little while to realise that from childhood his imagination has been shaped by a comparable profusion of narratives and tensions - of the African indigenous religion of his ancestors and the Christianity of his parents - and of a young African intellectual beginning a European styled literary career armed with a university education in English, History, and Theology from Ibadan - all fodder for an explosive literary encounter!
A re-launching of Achebe's African Pentology of novels, as well as essays, poems and children's books will presage the release of the books.
Though Achebe had released Another Africa in 1998, Home and Exile in 2000; and Collected Poems in 2004; The Education of a British Protected Child and The Igbo and their Perception of God, Human Beings and Creation pleasantly highlight Anchor Books enthusiasm about this new collection.
Connoisseurs of Literature can expect to see the re-emergence of the new African Writers Series (this time from Penguin, which bought Heinemann recently); for whom Achebe has agreed to serve as Senior Editorial Advisor. The new series will continue its quest to identify and publish the best of a new generation of African writers and showcase their work on the world stage.
