₦airaland Forum

[size=15pt]Biafra-nigeria War: For those young Souls born after War![/size]

There Was A Country - By Chinua Achebe

There Was a Country is in fact a lament for Biafra and the decline of Nigeria, which he relates directly to the Biafran war. Achebe was an Igbo, from the east of Nigeria. In his telling, the Igbo aroused hostility because of their intelligence and success; they had always been a democratic, well-educated and progressive people, and they flourished in the bigger context of Nigeria; jealousy of their influence built up and led to measures that echo the persecution of Jews in Germany.

Achebe, who was very senior in Nigerian broadcasting, felt that he had to leave Lagos, a place he loved, and return to the east. It was clear that the future of the Igbo in the wider Nigeria was uncertain, to say the least, with pressure from the Muslim north also increasing.

On 30 May 1967 the new state of Biafra was declared independent by Colonel Ojukwu on the grounds that easterners were no longer safe in Nigeria. War broke out almost immediately. It was a war of appalling savagery: images of the deaths of millions of Biafran children shocked the world, but no coherent plan to end the horror was ever implemented. In the end – January 1970 – Biafra had to surrender. Achebe says the Igbo have never fully recovered, and Nigeria has slid into a morass of corruption.

Throughout the war Achebe was closely involved. For a while he was an emissary for Biafra and was widely known in the world. Long after the war he turned down an honour from the government in Lagos. This important book tells a powerful story from within Achebe's world, a world made lucidly and movingly real by a great writer.

http://www.amazon.de/There-Was-Country-A-Memoir/dp/014312403X

Go and buy a copy to learn about it...

Why should I read a one-sided story? You can't be a judge in your own cause.

Achebe...Go and Die!

Achebe RIP. i love your works

[b]
“There Was a Country ought to be essential reading…an eclectic range of insights and fascinating anecdotes.”—Financial Times

“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, There Was a Country is a valuable account of how the suffering caused by war is both unnecessary and formative.”—Newsweek

"Memoir and history are brought together by a master storyteller."
—The Guardian

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He has published novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books. His volume of poetry Christmas in Biafra was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of God won the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Man Booker Prize. Things Fall Apart, 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.[/b]

I lost my elder brother in this war. He was forced to join the army and never return according to my mum. Hmmmm.

mcquin:
Why should I read a one-sided story? You can't be a judge in your own court.

Achebe...Go and Die!

hatred can make someone die in a case he knows nothing about,the worst possible scenario is when someone dies and goes to heaven, on the verge of being cleare and he was asked ''what exactly killed you'' and you couldn't give a straight account,stop hating the igbos they are greater than you in all ramifications.

SOUNDKING:
hatred can make someone die in a case he knows nothing about,the worst possible scenario is when someone dies and goes to heaven, on the verge of being cleare and he was asked ''what exactly killed you'' and you couldn't give a straight account,stop hating the igbos they are greater than you in all ramifications.

Guy you get sense at all? Every one is great in his right. Some Igbos are greater than me and I'm greater than some.

Can you be a Judge in your own cause? If you can't change that maxim, then don't quote me about any useless hating Igbos story.

Mumu expecting Achebe to tell his story and say Biafrans(himself included) screwed up is akin to expecting Jonathan to tell his story and say he failed.

mcquin:
Why should I read a one-sided story? You can't be a judge in your own court.

Achebe...Go and Die!

don't say dat again

ginawest:
don't say dat again

WHY? Were you expecting Achebe to say something different? Una no like hear the truth say Ojukwu sacrificed 3million lives including my relatives(as i'm efik) yet he went ahead to contest for a NIGERIAN PRESIDENCY. Who is deceiving who?

mcquin:
Guy you get sense at all? Every one is great in his right. Some Igbos are greater than me and I'm greater than some.

Can you be a Judge in your own cause? If you can't change that maxim, then don't quote me about any useless hating Igbos story.

Mumu expecting Achebe to tell his story and say Biafrans(himself included) screwed up is akin to expecting Jonathan to tell his story and say he failed.

may the good lord help you with a molecule of knowledge.

SOUNDKING:
may the good lord help you with a molecule of knowledge.

You when get sense no know about the Nemo judex in causa sua rule; wetin make we God do about your case? Till you respond to that you, you are no better than me that needs God's knowledge.

In any case I claim God's blessings for more knowledge and understanding.

We gone sink this zoo tho.
That's a promise.