Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo and Leslye Obiora Interviewed by Stephen Embleton

Nigerian novelist, poet and critic Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, a winner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature, talks about her life and work and her latest novel A Million Bullets and a Rose. She is joined by law professor and former Nigerian government minister Professor Leslye Obiora, 

Ezeigbo was raised in eastern Nigeria, partly in a rural community and partly in a city. She combines these two factors as the background for her children’s stories and adult fiction. Ezeigbo is a lecturer in English at Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ikwo, Ebonyi State, Nigeria, and a writer, novelist, critic, and essayist. Her recent works include a collection of poems, Heart Songs, and the novels, Trafficked and Fire from the Holy Mountain. House of Symbols was among the prizewinners in the Nigerian Prize for Literature. A Million Bullets and a Rose has been described as one of the most captivating and realistic of Biafran war literature.

Adimora-Ezeigbo and Obiora will discuss Igbo culture, the influence on both of them of Flora Nwapa - the mother of modern African literature, feminism, culture and the Biafra war.

Obiora is related to Flora Nwape. She is a law professor at the University of Arizoina, former Minister of Mines and Steel Development for the Federal Republic of Nigeria and founder of the Institute for Research on African Women, Children and Culture.

Here they talk to Stephen Embleton, the inaugural James Currey Fellow at the University of Oxford’s African Studies Centre, and author of the speculative fiction novel, Soul Searching.

This event is part of the festival’s programme of African literature and culture.