This Thursday was the birthday of Cyprian Ekwensi, the Nigerian novelist. Why not mark the occasion by reading Jagua Nana, his riotous Lagos novel?
Cyprian Odiatu Duaka Ekwensi was born in 1921 in Minna, Nigeria, the son of an Igbo storyteller and elephant hunter. He worked as a forestry officer in Nigeria and then as a pharmacist in Romford, Essex. When he returned to Nigeria, he published People of the City (1954), one of the first modern African novels to be published internationally, and he went on to write more than forty books for adults and children.
‘Jagua’ Nana is a brassy, big-hearted, chain-smoking, high-end sex worker in 1950s Lagos, who enjoys parties, scandals and wild nights at the Tropicana club. When she falls for young Freddie, however, she has to use all her ageing charms to fund his teacher training in England.
‘His glorious imagination captured ours,’ writes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who wrote an appreciation of Ekwensi, comparing him to Charles Dickens. ‘Jagua Nana is my favourite of his novels.’
When Jagua Nana was first published in London by Hutchinson in 1961 it was initially banned in Nigerian schools and attacked by the Catholic and Anglican Churches. In 1968, however, it won the Dag Hammarskjöld International Prize.
Jagua Nana was reissued in 1975 as number 146 in the influential Heinemann African Writers Series.
Heinemann’s African Writers Series launched in 1962 with an edition of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). Initially edited by Achebe, the series gave an international voice to post-independence African authors such as Nuruddin Farah, Bessie Head, Thomas Mofolo, Tayeb Salih, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Nelson Mandela, Dambudzo Marechera, Wole Soyinka, Naguib Mahfouz and Nadine Gordimer.
The paperback books were designed for classroom use and published in London as well as several cities across Africa. The series ran on into the 1980s and 90s, but gradually petered out as Heinemann was bought by a succession of publishing conglomerates.
Last year, in October 2023, Black Star Books and Head of Zeus launched the imprint Apollo Africa, which is making more than 100 titles from the original Heinemann African Writers series available again, as ebooks and print on demand paperbacks.
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I really enjoyed it when I read it a few years ago. I hadn’t previously read any classic African literature so I found the cultural aspects fascinating and she’s a remarkable character.