Elechi Amadi

Elechi Amadi (born 12 May 1934) is a Nigerian author of plays and novels that are generally about African village life, customs, beliefs and religious practices, as they were before contact with the Western world. Amadi is best regarded for his 1966 first novel, The Concubine, which has been called "an outstanding work of pure fiction".[1]

Biography

Born in 1934, in Aluu in the Ikwerre local government area of Rivers State, Nigeria, Elechi Amadi attended Government College, Umuahia (1948-52), Survey School, Oyo (1953-54), and the University of Ibadan (1955-59), where he obtained a degree in Physics and Mathematics.[2]

He worked for a time as a land surveyor and later was a teacher at several schools, including the Nigerian Military School, Zaria (1963-66).[3] Amadi served in the Nigerian army, remained there during the Nigerian Civil War, and retired at the rank of Captain.[4] He then held various positions with the Rivers State government: Permanent Secretary (1973-83), Commissioner for Education (1987-88) and Commissioner for Lands and Housing (1989-90).

He has been writer-in-residence and lecturer at Rivers State College of Education, where he has also been Dean of Arts, head of the literature department and Director of General Studies.

On 13 May 1989 a symposium was held at the University of Port Harcourt to celebrate Amadi's 55th birthday.

In May 2004, a conference was organized by the Association of Nigerian Authors, Rivers State Branch, to mark Elechi Amadi's 70th birthday.[5]

2009 kidnapping

On 5 January 2009 Amadi was kidnapped at his home in Aluu town, Port Harcourt, by unknown gunmen. He was released 23 hours later, on the evening of 6 January.[6][7]

Awards

Work and critical reception

Elechi Amadi has said that his first publication was in 1957, a poem entitled "Penitence" in a University of Ibadan campus magazine called The Horn, edited by John Pepper Clark.[8]

Amadi's first novel, The Concubine, was published in London in 1966 and was hailed as a "most accomplished first performance".[9] Alastair Niven in his critical study of the novel wrote: "Rooted firmly among the hunting and fishing villages of the Niger delta, The Concubine nevertheless possesses the timelessness and universality of a major novel."[10] The Concubine was made into a film, written by Elechi Amadi and directed by accomplished Nollywood film director Andy Amenechi, which premiered in Abuja in March 2007.[11]

The setting of Amachi's second novel, The Great Ponds, published in 1969, is pre-colonial Eastern Nigeria, and is about the battle between two village communities over possession of a pond.

In 1973 Amadi autobiographical non-fiction, Sunset in Biafra, was published. It records his personal experiences in the Nigeria-Biafra war, and according to Niven "is written in a compelling narrative form as though it were a novel".[12]

Bibliography

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Eldred Jones, "African Literature 1966-1967", African Forum, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 5.
  2. ↑ "Elechi Amadi (1934-)", Books and Writers.
  3. ↑ Hans M. Zell, Carol Bundy, Virginia Coulon, A New Reader's Guide to African Literature, Heinemann Educational Books, 1983; pp. 350-351.
  4. ↑ Elechi Amadi website, CV.
  5. ↑ Preface to Seiyifa Koroye, Critical Perspectives on Elechi Amadi, Port Harcourt: Pearl Publishers/Association of Nigerian Authors.
  6. ↑ "Gunmen kidnap Nigerian novelist", BBC News, 6 January 2009.
  7. ↑ Jimitota Onoyume and Samuel Oyadongha, "Nigeria: Novelist, Elechi Amadi Kidnapped, Freed After 23 Hours", AllAfrica, 7 January 2009.
  8. ↑ A Celebration of J. P. Clarke's 50 Years of Artistry, A Presentation by Elechi Amadi - 13 August 2010.
  9. ↑ Eustace Palmer, "Elechi Amadi and Flora Nwapa", African Literarture Today, no. 1, 1969, p. 56.
  10. ↑ Alastair Niven, A Critical View on Elechi Amadi's "The Concubine" (London, 1981), p. 7.
  11. ↑ Elechi Amadi website, videos.
  12. ↑ Niven, A Critical View on Elechi Amadi's "The Concubine", (1981), p. 5.

External links