Prominent Refugees...

Tuesday 11 January 2011

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, aka [1] Chinua Achebe,  was a writer from Nigeria . He went to USA for asylum .We was born on 16 November 1930 .
"Home and Exile" is the title of a book of essays by prize-winning Biafran poet and novelist Chinua Achebe, and it is a theme he knows something about.
Achebe was born and raised in Biafra, and his life has been shaped by the civil war that has torn his country apart. At school he read the works of British writers such as Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare and Joseph Conrad. He could not recognise the Africans portrayed in these works, and as he felt himself identifying more with the white characters, he began to worry he was forsaking his African roots. He was particularly irritated by the portrayal of Nigeria in Joyce Cary's 1939 novel, "Mister Johnson". At University College, Ibadan, he switched from medicine to the arts, and decided to become a writer. In 1990 a car accident outside Lagos, in Nigeria, left him paralysed from the waist down. He sought medical care in the United States, and has been teaching literature at Bard College, California, while waiting for the situation in Nigeria to improve so that he can return home on a permanent basis. He recently went back to Nigeria for a visit that inspired "Home and Exile", published in 2000.

[1] Aka means "Also Knowned As"

Miguel Amaral 12ºA