Joys of Motherhood

'A scorching portrayal of a woman's life . . . the female, feminist counterpart to Things Fall Apart' Bernardine Evaristo'God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody's appendage? ... when will I be free?'There is no greater honour for a woman in an Ibo village than to have children - especially sons. Unable to conceive in her first marriage, Nnu Ego is sent away to a new husband in the city of Lagos, where she finally succeeds in becoming a mother. But things are changing, and a war that unfolds thousands of miles away threatens her family's fortunes and her entire way of life. In a world where motherhood is everything, what will be left for her at the end of it all?'Sparkling intelligence and a certain kind of honest, lived, intimate insight into working-class colonial Nigeria' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I read and admired all her books ... The book I adored most was The Joys of Motherhood, for its sparkling intelligence and a certain kind of honest, lived, intimate insight into working-class colonial Nigeria, A scorching portrayal of a woman's life in pre-independence Nigeria . . . should be up there as the female, feminist counterpart to Chinua Achebe's celebrated and widely taught novel Things Fall Apart, A rich, multilayered work of fiction, full of drama and written with deceptive simplicity, Writes with subtlety, power, and abundant compassion, Fresh and relevant . . . expertly and sensitively shines a light on the distortion of traditional values

Buchi Emecheta (1944-2017) was born in Lagos, Nigeria and moved to London in 1961. A writer and academic, she wrote sixteen novels, three children's stories and numerous articles and television plays.