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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

"There Was A Country" By Chinua Achebe


"There Was A Country" - by renowned writer, Chinua Achebe. Just read several pages and I must confess, "It's an archival piece."

The book remains very controversial as it touches both ethnic and tribal issues that led to the most devastating civil war to have hit Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria.

So far, reviews have focused on a part of the book where the author's assertions, especially where he attributed the suffering of Biafrans to the food blockage policy that was championed by the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was then the Federal Commissioner of Finance.



However, the author's decision to publish his book, has been greatly criticized as ill-timed, considering the nations recurrent tribal unrest and religious reprisal attacks that has claimed thousands of lives.

Contrary to public discord, the book has enjoyed massive sale from the elites who rather than base their assertion on snippets of reports they read in the media, have decided to grab a copy.

In this vein, the intellectually sound thing to do without sentiments, would be to read the whole book first and then make more informed conclusions based on a holistic understanding of the content as stated in the book.

Chi Josh

NB: The writer specifically noted in the last paragraph of his Introduction (p3), that the book is a product of his own perspective.

In his words, "I begin this story with my own coming of age in an earlier and, in some respects, a more innocent time. I do this both to bring readers unfamiliar with this landscape into it at a human level and to be open about some of the sources of my own perspective." 

And personally, knowing that in a war situation, one cannot be present in all locations at a time, it is common for people to see many issues from different vantage points which in turn inform their conclusions.

Read and draw your own conclusion!


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