There Was a Country

by Chinua Achebe

First published 2012

Amazon

4.5(765)

Chinua Achebe combines memoir and history to describe the political crisis that divided Nigeria and produced the attempted secession of Biafra in 1967. He recalls his education, early literary career and work in broadcasting before tracing the coups of 1966, anti-Igbo massacres, the failure of negotiations and the declaration of the new state. Personal recollection places national decisions beside the experiences of writers, diplomats, soldiers and civilians drawn into the conflict.

The later chapters examine the federal blockade, mass starvation, international diplomacy and Biafra’s defeat in January 1970. Achebe includes poetry written during the war and reflects on the deaths of friends such as Christopher Okigbo, as well as his own service as a cultural representative for Biafra. The book is both testimony and argument: it records the human cost of the Nigerian Civil War while presenting Achebe’s interpretation of responsibility, memory and the continuing political consequences of the conflict.