Efuru

Pioneering author Flora Nwapa paints the stirring tale of a young wife attempting to carve out her own independence against the traditional beliefs of Igbo society. Ever since she was young, Efuru has been famed for her beauty, intelligence, and noble lineage. So her family is appalled when they uncover her betrothal to an unremarkable villager. Although generous in her devotion to him, Efuru soon begins to realise that love is weak in comparison to centuries of superstition and tradition. Her only reprieve is in the strange, vivid dream that visits her at night – one of an ethereal woman sitting at the bottom of a lake, entrancing Efuru with her beauty and lavish piles of riches. When a village sage reveals to Efuru that she has been chosen as a worshipper for the powerful lake goddess, Uhamiri, it seems she can finally find meaning in something beyond her marriage. Yet, even under the attention of the divine, Efuru will struggle to overcome the pressures of a community that values her womb beyond all else. From pregnancy to prophesy, female circumcision to the complications of polygamy, Efuru voyages to the core of the female experience in post-independent Nigeria. Flora Nwapa writes with the clear and impactful depth that has made Efuru an instant literary classic. 'If Chinua Achebe and Flora Nwapa [had] not written the books they did, when they did, and how they did, I would perhaps not have had the emotional courage to write.' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie