Achebe and Friends at Umuahia

[Explores] the great mystery that it addresses: how on earth did this sort of 'political' school produce 'such a number of renowned writers in one generation'[?]...Highly recommended. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *
This is an eminently readable book...Ochiagha is a clear and capable writer... Achebe and Friends certainly adds to our understanding of how a group of 1940s Nigerians schoolboys acquired the intellectual education which was a necessary precursor to the extraordinary literature that five of them went on to produce. * LUCAS BULLETIN *
Offers compelling insights into the development of Nigeria's most celebrated writers, and provides a much-needed account of how their education at Umuahia contributed to their success. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *
Proof that education has the power to change the world can be found in the story told in this groundbreaking book. * TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT *
Groundbreaking on many fronts. Not only is it 'the first in-depth scholarly study of the literary awakening of the young intellectuals who became known as Nigeria's 'first-generation' writers in the post-colonial period'; it also, subtly, proposes a new framework for receiving and interrogating the works of said writers. * TORCH *
A major study....this book is a new perspective on British colonial education in Nigeria and the development of Nigeria's modern literature, especially in the way the writers' visions were shaped to re-inscribe African literature. * AFRICA BOOK LINK *
Focusing on the emergence of an African elite at Government College Umuahia and their turn to literature as a mode of self-expression, Terri Ochiagha's Achebe and Friends answers one of the outstanding questions in African literary history: Why did the most important group of pioneer writers emerge from one institution in Eastern Nigeria in the last decades of colonial rule? Ochiagha combines the archival skills of a cultural historian with the sensibilities of a literary critic to produce perhaps one of the most important commentaries on African literature in recent years. This is a remarkable book on the origins of African literature and an unmatched model of how to do the literary history of the postcolonial world. -- SIMON GIKANDI, Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University