African Short Stories [Paperback]

"'A fine anthology, well selected, well ordered, and altogether a pleasure to read. The editors have chosen twenty stories by twenty different writers from all over Africa, grouping them geographically into four different sections: West, East, North and Southern Africa... They have done a particularly good job of balancing the work of lesser-known, younger writers with established figures: David Owoyele as well as Adhebe, Abdulrzak Gurnah as well as Ngugi, Ahmed Essop as well as Nadine Gordimer and Bessie Head.'"
World Literature Today


"'There is indeed wonderful writing in the collection'."
New York Literary Supplement


"'A highly recommended book for teachers to use as an introduction (a) to the short story and (b) to Africa.'"
The Times Educational Supplement, Edward Blishen

"'...African Short Stories is a worthy showcase of recent African writing...""
Africa Events

Chinua Achebe has joined with C.L. Innes, co-editor of "Okike," to select stories of excellence from the writings of the last twenty-five years. While many of the established names such as Sembene Ousmane, Ngugi, and Bessie Head are to be found, the collection is refreshing for the inclusion of work by the wide range of writers who have made the emerging field of African fiction something to follow.

Chinua Achebe was born in 1930 in the village of Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria. After studying medicine and literature at the University of Ibadan, he went to work for the Nigerian broadcasting company in Lagos. Things Fall Apart, his first novel was published in 1958. It sold over 2,000,000 copies, and has been translated into 30 languages. It was followed by No Longer at Ease, then Arrow of God (which won the first New Statesman Jock Campbell Prize), then A Man of the People (a novel dealing with post-independence Nigeria). Achebe has also written short stories and children's books, and Beware Soul Brother, a book of his poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972.Achebe has been at the Universities of Nigeria, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and among the many honours he has received are the award of a Fellowship of the Modern Language Association of America, and doctorates from the Universities of Stirling, Southampton and Kent. He followed Heinrich Boll, the Nobel prizewinner, as the second recipient of the Scottish Art's Council Neil Gunn Fellowship. In 1987, he was recognised in Nigeria with the Nigerian National Merit Award - the country's highest award for intellectual achievement.