Chinua Achebe

“I read No Longer at Ease when I was going to school in Pakistan. It was the first novel by an African writer that I had ever read. In some sense it felt familiar. The main character leaves Nigeria, goes to study in Britain and is, as the title suggests, no longer at ease. It’s a novel that stayed with me, in part because it broadened my sense of who could write literature and what literature was supposed to be about. No Longer at Ease explores not just moving to a country but leaving a country and returning. The dynamic of somebody who moves in two directions—abroad and back again, was of real interest to me, as someone who had done that myself. I’ve bounced to and from Pakistan and America, and other places as well. The sense that we’re changed by migration—that home is no longer the same because we are no longer the same—was very powerful in that book and that’s part of why it sticks with me.” Read more...

The Best Transnational Literature

Mohsin Hamid, Novelist

“Chike and the River is about a boy who discovers his dreams. It’s like Oliver Twist. He is used to being pampered and being kept within the house, and then he goes and discovers the river on a trip to the city. That wakes up this taste, or quest, for a deeper understanding of life. I think the encounter with that element, water, actually opens the window to him developing a kind of internal philosophy of life. That is what the book is about. It’s a coming-of-age story.” Read more...

The best books on Boyhood and Growing Up

Chigozie Obioma, Literary Scholar

“He is a brilliant narrator. He can say anything and he will captivate you and you will listen. He is a great performer. Here he is writing about the confrontation between Western culture and the traditional culture and he gives you a historical framework in these essays – but he does it in a very personal way. “ Read more...

The best books on Nigeria

Helon Habila, Novelist

“It almost feels like a cliché to say that this is one of my favourite books. But there is no way you can escape this book. It is such a part of African literature. It is an inescapable classic. It is a brilliant feat of storytelling, the economy of it, the brevity, the imagery, the ear he has for the traditional language. This is the story of Okonkwo, one of the chiefs in the village who rose from poverty and becomes one of the leading figures. He is a leader and local wrestling champion in Umuofia, a fictional group of nine villages in Nigeria, inhabited by the Igbos. He tries to stick to the tradition that he knows and is hopeless when confronted with the modern. He cannot wrap his mind around change in the form of the British and the missionaries and ultimately he is destroyed by that. Even though it is a tragic story you are still captivated by it.” Read more...

The best books on Nigeria

Helon Habila, Novelist

“If you’ve lived in a country which isn’t under a dictatorship and move to a country that has been for most of the last decade, you inevitably wonder how it is that these bloodthirsty pantomime figures came to be running the place. Anthills gives the human side of the story. A group of friends have all known each other in their youth. Over time they go off in their different directions. One of them becomes a key aide to the dictator, another becomes a journalist, and the book makes this gradual divergence believable. The dictator doesn’t become a dictator overnight, it’s a step-by-step thing, a bit like the story of the frog in the boiling water. The writing is very lively, the book gives you an understanding of how people who were genuinely admirable liberation-style heroes can turn into despots over time. It’s a much more sophisticated and human account of dictatorship than the one-line, comic-book dismissal you often get.” Read more...

The best books on Nigeria

Michael Peel, Foreign Correspondent