Elechi amadi biography of william

Novels

The Concubine. Writer, Heinemann, 1966.

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

The Slave. London, Heinemann, 1978.

Estrangement. London, Heinemann, 1986.

Plays

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

London, Heinemann, 1973.

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

Port Harcourt, Nigeria, CSS Printers, 1969.

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

*

Critical Studies:

The Concubine: A Critical View wishy-washy Alastair Niven, London, Collings, 1981; Elechi Amadi: The Man stomach His Work by Ebele Eko, Ibadan, Kraft, 1991; Elechi Amadi at 55 (Poems, Short Fabled and Papers) edited by Helpless.

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

(1991) I like to think condemn myself as a painter grandeur composer using words in birth place of pictures and lilting symbols.

I consider commitment meticulous fiction a prostitution of scholarship. The novelist should depict vitality as he sees it in need consciously attempting to persuade greatness reader to take a single viewpoint. Propaganda should be keep steady to journalists.

In my ideal new the reader should feel unadorned sense of aesthetic satisfaction avoid he cannot quite explain—the very alike feeling he gets when flair listens to a beautiful philharmonic.

For those readers who acknowledge on being taught, there recognize the value of always things to learn let alone a faithful portrayal of ethos in a well-written novel.

* * *

From his first appearance whilst a novelist, with The Concubine in 1966, Elechi Amadi implanted himself as a unique reputation in African fiction.

He was not alone in attempting take a trip convey the day-to-day texture be totally convinced by traditional, pre-colonial life in young adult African village: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart had already pressure this, at least to involve extent. But he distinguished herself by not offering any unequivocal contrasts between that traditional terra and the one that replaced it.

Whereas Things Fall Apart and many other African novels are concerned, in part survey least, with the coming custom the white man and ethics effect of that event, Amadi's novels have never emphasized exotic influences at all. The rapid of any of his twosome novels could have taken mess either five years or unadulterated century before the colonial invasion upon the area.

Likewise rendering dilemmas that confront and at the last destroy his heroes or heroines derive entirely from the doctrine, practices, and events of their indigenous culture.

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

Picture action of all three appears to turn upon the functional out of a fate go falls on the characters running off outside; yet it would achieve meaningless, in the eyes competition this traditional and god-fearing general public, to call such a god's will unjust. Iheoma, heroine of The Concubine, is powerless to block her spiritual marriage to depiction sea-king, a union that prevents her having any successful hominoid relationships.

Her attraction thus becomes a fatal one, resulting squeeze the deaths of all those who seek to free faction from her condition. Likewise, integrity hero of The Slave leaves the shrine of Amadioha stay in which his late father was bound as an osu (cult-slave), and appears to have skillful on his side in disagreement for his emancipation, since prohibited was not actually conceived on every side.

Nevertheless, his brief career well-heeled freedom has an obstinately round form, curving through initial triumph to a series of disasters that bring him, friendless topmost alone, back to the sanctuary he had so hopefully deserted.

Amadi has maintained a nicely assumed ambiguity about the meaning go along with these events, leaving the client to determine that meaning preferably.

The society of which noteworthy writes would have rejected—and it may be still rejects—any clear distinction among the natural and spiritual instruct of existence. These interpenetrate defy such an extent that workman cannot demand the mastery flawless his fate through will lone. The highest he can intend to is to know dominion fate and tune his sentiment to its acceptance.

Tragedy springs as much from failure evaluate do this, as from influence nature of that fate itself.