Cyprian Ekwensi
Nigerian novelist, short-story writer, and children’s author, who has portrayed
the moral and material problems besetting rural West Africans as they migrate
to the city. A prolific and popular writer, he owes his immense success to his
ability to write realistically about current issues affecting ordinary
people.His first published success came with the novella When Love Whispers (1948). People
of the City (1954), a collection of short stories tied together almost as a
novel, chronicles the frantic pace of life in modern Lagos, Nigeria’s former
capital.His most successful novel, Jagua
Nana (1961),tells the story of a vibrant middle-aged prostitute who moves
between the corrupt, pleasure-seeking life of the city and the pastoral life of
her rural origins. Ekwensi continued his career as a writer, reflecting on the
war and its aftermath in the novels Survive
the Peace (1976) and Divided We Stand
(1980). In 1986 he published a sequel to Jagua
Nana called Jagua Nana’s Daughter.
His children’s books include The Passport
of Mallam Ilia (1960), The Drummer
Boy (1960), and Juju Rock (1966).
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