civil war, 1967-1970

The Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War of 1967-1970 was the defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people. Chinua Achebe was already a world-renowned novelist and he took the Biafran side and served his government as a roving cultural ambassador which allowed him to see the war's full horror. Immediately after the war Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States and for forty years he has maintained silence on those years addressing them only in his poetry. His memoir on those years now brings all his experiences to the world.

Biafra's struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960's sets the stage for the story that portrays the lives of five people caught up in this tumultuous decade.

The lives of Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy, Olanna, the mistress of the professor the boy works for, and Richard, a Englishman in love with the woman's sister, are endangered during the political unrest resulting from the forming of the independent nation of Biafra in Nigeria.