{"product_id":"there-was-a-countryisbn-9781594204821","title":"There Was a Country","description":"\u003ci\u003eFrom the legendary author of \u003c\/i\u003eThings Fall Apart\u003ci\u003e comes a longawaited memoir about coming of age with a fragile new nation, then watching it torn asunder in a tragic civil war\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  defining experience of Chinua Achebe’s life was the Nigerian civil war,  also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970. The conflict was infamous  for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe’s people,  many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government  blockaded their borders. By then, Chinua Achebe was already a  world-renowned novelist, with a young family to protect. He took the  Biafran side in the conflict and served his government as a roving  cultural ambassador, from which vantage he absorbed the war’s full  horror. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the  United States, and for more than forty years he has maintained a  considered silence on the events of those terrible years, addressing  them only obliquely through his poetry. Now, decades in the making,  comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa’s most fateful  events, from a writer whose words and courage have left an enduring  stamp on world literature. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAchebe masterfully relates his  experience, bothas he lived it and how he has come to understand it. He  begins his story with Nigeria’s birth pangs and the story of his own  upbringing as a man and as a writer so that we might come to understand  the country’s promise, which turned to horror when the hot winds of  hatred began to stir. To read \u003ci\u003eThere Was a Country\u003c\/i\u003e is to be  powerfully reminded that artists have a particular obligation,  especially during a time of war. All writers, Achebe argues, should be  committed writers—they should speak for their history, their beliefs,  and their people. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMarrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, \u003ci\u003eThere Was a Country \u003c\/i\u003eis  a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of  research and reflection. Wise, humane, and authoritative, it will stand  as definitive and reinforce Achebe’s place as one of the most vital  literary and moral voices of our age.\u003cb\u003e\"Foreign Policy Must Read 2012\" by Books from Global Thinkers\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Chinua Achebe’s history of Biafra is a meditation on the condition of freedom. It has the tense narrative grip of the best fiction. It is also a revelatory entry into the intimate character of the writer’s brilliant mind and bold spirit. Achebe has created here a new genre of literature in which politico-historical evidence, the power of story-telling, and revelations from the depths of the human subconscious are one. The event of a new work by Chinua Achebe is always extraordinary; this one exceeds all expectation.”—Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature\u003cp\u003e“A fascinating and gripping memoir.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThere Was a Country \u003c\/i\u003eought to be essential reading…an eclectic range of insights and fascinating anecdotes.”—\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Achebe writes in a characteristically modest fashion…Like much of Achebe’s other work, this book about the progress of war and the presence of violence has a universal quality. In a world where sectarian hatreds augmented by political mediocrity have fractured Syria and threaten to bring Israel and Iran to blows, \u003ci\u003eThere Was a Country\u003c\/i\u003e is a valuable account of how the suffering caused by war is both unnecessary and formative.”—\u003ci\u003eNewsweek\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Memoir and history are brought together by a master storyteller.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eChinua Achebe\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Nigeria in 1930. He has published novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books. His volume of poetry \u003ci\u003eChristmas in Biafra\u003c\/i\u003e was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, \u003ci\u003eArrow of God\u003c\/i\u003e won the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and \u003ci\u003eAnthills of the Savannah\u003c\/i\u003e was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize. \u003ci\u003eThings Fall Apart\u003c\/i\u003e, Achebe’s masterpiece, has been published in fifty different languages and has sold more than ten million copies internationally since its first publication in 1958. Achebe is the recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award, Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize. He died in March 2013.\u003cp\u003eAn Igbo proverb tells us that a man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe rain that beat Africa began four to five hundred years ago, from the “discovery” of Africa by Europe, through the transatlantic slave trade to the Berlin Conference of 1885. That controversial gathering of the world’s leading European powers precipitated what we now call the Scramble for Africa, which created new boundaries that did violence to Africa’s ancient societies and resulted in tension-prone modern states. It took place without African consultation or representation, to say the least.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGreat Britain was handed the area of West Africa that would later become Nigeria, like a piece of chocolate cake at a birthday party. It was one of the most populous regions on the African continent, with over 250 ethnic groups and distinct languages. The northern part of the country was the seat of several ancient kingdoms, such as the Kanem-Bornu—which Usman dan Fodio and his jihadists absorbed into the Muslim Fulani Empire. The Middle Belt of Nigeria was the locus of the glorious Nok Kingdom and its world-renowned terra-cotta sculptures. The southern protectorate was home to some of the region’s most sophisticated civilizations. In the west, the Oyo and Ife kingdoms once flourished majestically, and in the midwest the incomparable Benin Kingdom elevated artistic distinction to a new level. Across the Niger River in the East, the Calabar and the Nri kingdoms flourished. If the Berlin Conference sealed her fate, then the amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorates inextricably complicated Nigeria’s destiny. Animists, Muslims, and Christians alike were held together by a delicate, some say artificial, lattice.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBritain’s indirect rule was a great success in northern and western Nigeria, where affairs of state within this new dispensation continued as had been the case for centuries, with one exception—there was a new sovereign, Great Britain, to whom all vassals pledged fealty and into whose coffers all taxes were paid. Indirect rule in Igbo land proved far more challenging to implement. Colonial rule functioned through a newly created and incongruous establishment of “warrant chiefs”—a deeply flawed arrangement that effectively confused and corrupted the Igbo democratic spirit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfrica’s postcolonial disposition is the result of a people who have lost the habit of ruling themselves. We have also had difficulty running the new systems foisted upon us at the dawn of independence by “our colonial masters.” Because the West has had a long but uneven engagement with the continent, it is imperative that it understands what happened to Africa. It must also play a part in the solution. A meaningful solution will require the goodwill and concerted efforts on the part of all those who share the weight of Africa’s historical burden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMost members of my generation, who were born before Nigeria’s independence, remember a time when things were very different. Nigeria was once a land of great hope and progress, a nation with immense resources at its disposal—natural resources, yes, but even more so, human resources. But the Biafran war changed the course of Nigeria. In my view it was a cataclysmic experience that changed the history of Africa.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is for the sake of the future of Nigeria, for our children and grandchildren, that I feel it is important to tell Nigeria’s story, Biafra’s story, our story, my story.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303970689253,"sku":"NP9781594204821","price":27.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781594204821.jpg?v=1730755937","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/there-was-a-countryisbn-9781594204821","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}