There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Chinua Achebe

Penguin Press HC

352 pages, $28

The Nigerian civil war of 1967–1970, also known as the Biafran War, was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe’s people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. World-renowned novelist Chinua Achebe, who has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years, now offers a reckoning with one of modern Africa’s most fateful events.