| Description |
1 online resource (xix, 491 pages) : map |
| Contents |
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- List of Abbreviations -- Timeline of Nigeria's Political History, 1900-1970 -- Map of Biafra 30 May 1967 -- 1 May 1969 -- 1 Scholarly Trends, Issues, and Themes: Introduction -- Part I ON THE HISTORY OF THE NIGERIA-BIAFRA WAR -- 2 Background to the Nigerian Civil War -- 3 Connecting Theory with Reality: Understanding the Causes of the Nigeria-Biafra War -- 4 The Ahiara Declaration and the Fate of Biafra in a Postcolonial/Bi-Polar World Order -- 5 The Ahiara Declaration Polemics and Politics -- Part II CRITICAL DEBATES ON THE NIGERIAN CRISIS -- 6 Beyond the Blame Game: Theorizing the Nigeria-Biafra War -- 7 Confronting the Challenges of Nationhood in Pre-Biafran Texts: Newspaper Narratives on the Eve of War* -- 8 Literary Separatism: Ethnic Balkanization in Nigeria-Biafra War Narratives -- 9 Local Writers and Commitments to Ethnic Sentiments -- Part III THE WAR IN FICTION, MEMOIR, AND IMAGINATION -- 10 Memoirs and the Question of Objectivity: Revisiting Alexander Madiebo's The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War and Robert Collis's Nigeria in Conflict -- 11 'War is War' Recreating the Dreams and Nightmares of the Nigeria-Biafra War through the Eyes of Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy -- 12 First, There Was a Country: Then There Wasn't: Reflections on Achebe's There Was a Country -- 13 Ethnic Minorities and the Biafran National Imaginary in Chukwuemeka Ike's Sunset at Dawn and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun -- 14 Biafra in the Irish Imagination: War and Famine in Banville's An End to Flight and Forristal's Black Man's Country -- 15 Magical Realism or Science Fiction: The Nigerian Civil War and Ali Mazrui's The Trial of Christopher Okigbo -- 16 Biafra, an Impractical Mission? Revisiting S.O. Mezu's Behind the Rising Sun and I.N.C. Aniebo's The Anonymity of Sacrifice -- 17 Neo-Colonialism, Biafra, and the Causes of War as Imagined in Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra -- 18 No, This is Not Redemption: The Biafra War Legacy in Chris Abani's GraceLand -- Part IV LOCATING GENDER IN NIGERIA-BIAFRA WAR LITERATURE -- 19 Gender and the Construction of the Nigeria-Biafra War Scholarship -- 20 What is the Country? Reimagining National Space in Women's Writing on the Biafran War -- 21 Female Participation in War and the Implication of Nationalism: The Postcolonial Disconnection in Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra -- Select Bibliography -- Index |
| Summary |
The Nigeria-Biafra War lasted from 6 July 1966 to 15 January 1970, during which time the post-colonial Nigerian state fought to bring the South-Eastern region, which had seceded as the State or Republic of Biafra, back into the newly independent but ideologically divided nation. This volume discusses the trends and methodologies in the civil war writings, both fictional and non-fictional, and is the first to analyse in detail the intellectual and historical circumstances that helped to shape these often contentious texts. The recent high-profile fictional account by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Half of a Yellow Sun was preceded by works by Ken Saro-Wiwa, Elechi Amadi, Kole Omotoso, Wole Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Chukwuemeka Ike and Chris Abani, all of which stronglyconvey the horrific human cost of the war on individuals and their communities. The non-fictional accounts, including Chinua Achebe's last work There Was a Country, are biographies, personal accounts and essays on the causes and course of the war, its humanitarian crises and the collaboration of foreign nations. The contributors examine writers' and protagonists' use of contemporary published texts as a means of continued resistance and justification of the war, the problems of objectivity encountered in memoirs, and how authors' backgrounds and sources determine the kinds of biases that influenced their interpretations, including the gendered divisions in Nigeria-Biafra War scholarship and sources. By initiating a dialogue on the civil war literature, this volume engages a much-needed discourse on the problems confronting a culturally diverse post-war Nigeria. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University DistinguishedTeaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; Ogechukwu Ezekwem is a PhD student in the Department of History, University of Texas at Austin |
| Analysis |
1960s Africa |
|
African studies |
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
Nigeria-Biafra War |
|
Nigeria |
|
civil war literature |
|
civil war |
|
history of war |
|
independence |
|
literary studies |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 477-485) and index |
| Notes |
Vendor-supplied metadata |
| Subject |
HISTORY -- Africa -- West.
|
|
Historiography
|
|
Nigeria -- History -- Civil War, 1967-1970.
|
|
Nigeria -- History -- Civil War, 1967-1970 -- Historiography
|
|
Nigeria
|
| Genre/Form |
History
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| Author |
Williams, Ogechukwu E., editor
|
|
Falola, Toyin, editor.
|
| ISBN |
9781782047735 |
|
1782047735 |
|
1847011446 |
|
9781847011442 |
|
