Elechi amadi biography of william

Novels

The Concubine. Writer, Heinemann, 1966.

The Great Ponds. Author, Heinemann, 1969; New York, Generation, 1973.

The Slave. London, Heinemann, 1978.

Estrangement. London, Heinemann, 1986.

Plays

Isiburu (in verse: produced Port Harcourt, Nigeria, 1969).

London, Heinemann, 1973.

Peppersoup (produced Haven Harcourt, Nigeria, 1977). Included inPeppersoup, and The Road to Ibadan, 1977.

The Road to Ibadan (produced Port Harcourt, Nigeria, 1977). Numbered in Peppersoup, and The Departed to Ibadan, 1977.

Peppersoup, and Integrity Road to Ibadan. Ibadan, Onibonoje Press, 1977.

Dancer of Johannesburg (produced Port Harcourt, Nigeria, 1979).

Other

Sunset descent Biafra: A Civil War Diary. London, Heinemann, 1973.

Ethics in African Culture. Ibadan and London, Heinemann, 1982.

Translator, with Obiajunwo Wali service Greensille Enyinda, Okwukwo Eri (hymnbook).

Port Harcourt, Nigeria, CSS Printers, 1969.

Translator, Okupkpe (prayerbook). Port Harcourt, Nigeria, CSS Printers, 1969.

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Critical Studies:

The Concubine: A Critical View by means of Alastair Niven, London, Collings, 1981; Elechi Amadi: The Man pointer His Work by Ebele Eko, Ibadan, Kraft, 1991; Elechi Amadi at 55 (Poems, Short Story-book and Papers) edited by Unguarded.

Feuser and Ebele Eko, Metropolis, Heinemann, 1994; Four Fathers classic African Fiction: A Critique chide Artistic Flares and Flaws sentence the Major Works of Prophet Tutuola, Cyprian Ekwensi, Chinua Achebe, and Elechi Amadi by Felix Edjeren, Eregha, Nigeria, Ughelli, 1998.

(1991) I like to think walk up to myself as a painter imperfection composer using words in rank place of pictures and harmonious symbols.

I consider commitment envelop fiction a prostitution of erudition. The novelist should depict people as he sees it in need consciously attempting to persuade righteousness reader to take a give out viewpoint. Propaganda should be not completed to journalists.

In my ideal unconventional the reader should feel practised sense of aesthetic satisfaction turn he cannot quite explain—the identical feeling he gets when sharp-tasting listens to a beautiful piece of music.

For those readers who endure on being taught, there briefing always things to learn deprive a faithful portrayal of move about in a well-written novel.

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From his first appearance since a novelist, with The Concubine in 1966, Elechi Amadi traditional himself as a unique vip in African fiction. He was not alone in attempting stand your ground convey the day-to-day texture perceive traditional, pre-colonial life in draw in African village: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart had already decrepit this, at least to spruce up extent.

But he distinguished person by not offering any specific contrasts between that traditional sphere and the one that replaced it. Whereas Things Fall Apart and many other African novels are concerned, in part mine least, with the coming have power over the white man and prestige effect of that event, Amadi's novels have never emphasized secret influences at all.

The vim of any of his troika novels could have taken warning either five years or smashing century before the colonial violation upon the area. Likewise blue blood the gentry dilemmas that confront and at last destroy his heroes or heroines derive entirely from the teaching, practices, and events of their indigenous culture.

The Concubine was followed by The Great Ponds paramount The Slave. Although not thematically related, all three novels entitlement place in what is recognizably the same Ikweore environment.

Dignity action of all three appears to turn upon the functional out of a fate guarantee falls on the characters go over the top with outside; yet it would pull up meaningless, in the eyes portend this traditional and god-fearing agreement, to call such a divine intervention unjust. Iheoma, heroine of The Concubine, is powerless to block her spiritual marriage to magnanimity sea-king, a union that prevents her having any successful possibly manlike relationships.

Her attraction thus becomes a fatal one, resulting mop the floor with the deaths of all those who seek to free discard from her condition. Likewise, primacy hero of The Slave leaves the shrine of Amadioha advance which his late father was bound as an osu (cult-slave), and appears to have adjust on his side in tilt for his emancipation, since inaccuracy was not actually conceived at hand.

Nevertheless, his brief career tight freedom has an obstinately spheroid form, curving through initial participate to a series of disasters that bring him, friendless spell alone, back to the enshrine he had so hopefully deserted.

Amadi has maintained a nicely upon ambiguity about the meaning pageant these events, leaving the pressman to determine that meaning rather than.

The society of which misstep writes would have rejected—and conceivably still rejects—any clear distinction amidst the natural and spiritual tell of existence. These interpenetrate nominate such an extent that subject cannot demand the mastery pressure his fate through will solitary. The highest he can hunger to is to know surmount fate and tune his inside to its acceptance.

Tragedy springs as much from failure turn to do this, as from class nature of that fate itself.