Literature & Ideas
Landmark
Flora Nwapa
1931 – 1993
The first African woman to publish a novel internationally in English
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Nigeria Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Efuru, in 1966, was the first novel in English by an African woman published internationally — and she went on to found her own press when publishers would not take women seriously.
Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa was born at Oguta in eastern Nigeria, took degrees at Ibadan and Edinburgh, and was working as an education officer when Heinemann published Efuru in 1966.
It was the first novel in English by an African woman to be published internationally, and it did something the African writing of that decade had not: it put a woman at the centre and kept her there. Efuru is a trader, independent, twice married and twice separated, childless in a society that measures women by children, and the book takes her seriously on her own terms rather than as somebody's wife or mother. It is narrated largely through the talk of Oguta women, which male critics of the period found trivial and which is now read as the point.
She served as a minister in the East Central State government after the civil war, with responsibility for resettling refugees and orphans.
When she found that publishers were reluctant to take African women's writing, she founded Tana Press in 1974 and Flora Nwapa Books — becoming the first African woman to run her own publishing house, and printing her own work and children's books rather than waiting for permission. She is widely called the mother of modern African women's literature; Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie all follow through the door she opened.
It was the first novel in English by an African woman to be published internationally, and it did something the African writing of that decade had not: it put a woman at the centre and kept her there. Efuru is a trader, independent, twice married and twice separated, childless in a society that measures women by children, and the book takes her seriously on her own terms rather than as somebody's wife or mother. It is narrated largely through the talk of Oguta women, which male critics of the period found trivial and which is now read as the point.
She served as a minister in the East Central State government after the civil war, with responsibility for resettling refugees and orphans.
When she found that publishers were reluctant to take African women's writing, she founded Tana Press in 1974 and Flora Nwapa Books — becoming the first African woman to run her own publishing house, and printing her own work and children's books rather than waiting for permission. She is widely called the mother of modern African women's literature; Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie all follow through the door she opened.
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