Flora Nwapa is Nigerian’s first female novelist

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Flora Nwapa is Nigerian’s first female novelist

Flora Nwapa is Nigerian’s first female  novelist best known for re-creating Igbo  life and customs from a woman’s view point.

Born January 13 1931, Nwapa was educated in Ogula, Port Harcourt, and Lagos before attending University College in Ibadan, Nigeria, between 1953 to 1957, and the University of Edinburgh. Having  worked as a teacher and administrator in Nigeria from 1959 till the Biafran Civil War erupted in 1967. After the war, she was Commissioner for Health and Social Welfare in East Central State before she formed Tana Press a Company which  published African books.

Nwapa’s first novel, Efuru  is based on an old folktale of a woman chosen by the gods. Another of her works,  Idu,  centres on a woman whose life is bound up with that of her husband to such an extent that when he dies, she seeks him out in the land of the dead. In, This Is Lagos, and Other Stories and the later novels, One Is Enough,  and Women Are Different , Nwapa continued her compassionate portrayal of women in modern Nigerian society. The novel, Never Again  and Wives at War and Other Stories  deal with the Biafran conflict. Her sole volume of poetry is Cassava Song and Rice Song.